Flavored axion-monodromy inflation

TL;DR

This paper explores a novel inflation model where pseudo-goldstone bosons from flavor symmetry breaking serve as the inflaton, linking particle physics flavor hierarchies with cosmological inflation constraints.

Contribution

It introduces two-field axion-monodromy inflation models using flavor sector pseudo-goldstone bosons, connecting flavor symmetry breaking with inflation dynamics.

Findings

Models are constrained by current cosmological data.

Inflation driven by flavor sector pseudo-goldstone bosons is viable.

Links between flavor physics and cosmology are established.

Abstract

The hierarchy of fermion masses in the standard model may arise via the breaking of discrete gauge symmetries. The renormalizable interactions of the flavor-symmetry-breaking potential can have accidental global symmetries that are spontaneously broken, leading to pseudo-goldstone bosons that may drive inflation. We consider two-field, axion-monodromy inflation models in which the inflaton is identified with a linear combination of pseudo-goldstone bosons of the flavor sector. We show that the resulting models are nontrivially constrained by current cosmological data as well as the requirements of viable flavor model building.