Is inflation from unwinding fluxes IIB?

TL;DR

This paper explores unwinding flux inflation within warped IIB string compactifications, analyzing its potential for large field inflation and identifying key constraints and prospects for consistent models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that unwinding flux inflation can occur in warped IIB compactifications and assesses its viability for large field inflation with detailed analysis of constraints.

Findings

Achieved 60 e-folds of inflation with trans-Planckian field excursion.

Found tensions between geometric constraints and observed scalar spectrum amplitude.

Identified potential for more complex models to realize consistent large field inflation.

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the mechanism of unwinding inflation is naturally present in warped compactifications of type IIB string theory with local throats. The unwinding of flux is caused by its annihilation against branes. The resulting inflaton potential is linear with periodic modulations. We initiate an analysis of the inflationary dynamics and cosmological observables, which are highly constrained by moduli stabilization. For the simplified model of single-K\"ahler Calabi-Yau spaces we find that many, though not all of the consistency constraints can be satisfied. Particularly, in this simple model geometric constraints are in tension with obtaining the observed amplitude of the scalar power spectrum. However, we do find 60 efolds of inflation with a trans-Planckian field excursion which offers the hope that slightly more complicated models can lead to a fully consistent explicit construction of large field inflation of this kind.