Unwinding Inflation
Guido D'Amico, Roberto Gobbetti, Matthew Kleban, Marjorie Schillo

TL;DR
Unwinding inflation is a string-inspired model where flux decay via brane nucleation causes a steady decrease in vacuum energy, leading to inflation with observable predictions like a scale-invariant spectrum, tensor modes, and non-Gaussianities.
Contribution
This paper introduces a novel inflationary mechanism based on flux unwinding in string theory, connecting bubble nucleation to observable cosmological signatures.
Findings
Achieves N e-folds of inflation with consistent density perturbations.
Predicts a non-decaying oscillatory component in the power spectrum.
Allows inflation without fine-tuning of string parameters.
Abstract
Higher-form flux that extends in all 3+1 dimensions of spacetime is a source of positive vacuum energy that can drive meta-stable eternal inflation. If the flux also threads compact extra dimensions, the spontaneous nucleation of a bubble of brane charged under the flux can trigger a classical cascade that steadily unwinds many units of flux, gradually decreasing the vacuum energy while inflating the bubble, until the cascade ends in the self-annihilation of the brane into radiation. With an initial number of flux quanta Q_{0} \simgeq N, this can result in N efolds of inflationary expansion while producing a scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations with amplitude and tilt consistent with observation. The power spectrum has an oscillatory component that does not decay away during inflation, relatively large tensor power, and interesting non-Gaussianities. Unwinding…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
