Weak gravity strongly constrains large-field axion inflation

By B. Heidenreich, Michael J. Reece, Tom Rudelius. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015

190 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the simplest case in which a single compact axion descends from a gauge field in an extra dimension. We argue that the Weak Gravity Conjecture also constrains a variety of theories of multiple compact axions including N-flation and some alignment models. We show that other alignment models entail surprising consequences for how the mass spectrum of the theory varies across the axion moduli space, and hence can be excluded if further conjectures hold. In every case that we consider, plausible assumptions lead to field ranges that cannot be parametrically larger than MPl. Our results are strongly suggestive of a general inconsistency in models of large-field inflation based on compact axions, and possibly of a more general principle forbidding super-Planckian field ranges.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d151e17a080ab698db12bd323e14b40a5482ae22

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Eran Palti
2. Gary Shiu
3. Pablo Soler
4. M. Montero
5. Michael J. Reece
6. B. Heidenreich
7. Tom Rudelius
8. T. Weigand

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Eran Palti
2. Gary Shiu
3. Pablo Soler
4. Michael J. Reece
5. B. Heidenreich
6. Tom Rudelius
7. M. Montero
8. T. Weigand

Citations in the corpus

• The Swampland: Introduction and Review (2019, methodology): “19 There have been many studies related to this idea [7, 8, 26, 86, 105,106,109,111,115–149], some of which we will discuss in more detail in section 4.”
• Recent Progress in the Physics of Axions and Axion-Like Particles (2020, unknown): “12) while giving ∆aL > MP [130–135].”
• The Weak Gravity Conjecture in three dimensions (2016, methodology): “In particular, it has been recently applied to large-field inflationary models and relaxions [2–22].”
• Sharpening the weak gravity conjecture with dimensional reduction (2015, methodology): “However, extending this “strong form” to the case with more than one U(1) is not completely straightforward [14].”
• Evidence for a sublattice weak gravity conjecture (2016, background): “We have seen before that combinations of Weak Gravity arguments with arguments about low cutoffs on effective field theory have the potential to be quite powerful in constraining large-field inflation models [21], so this could be an interesting outcome.”