{"paper":{"title":"Spinodal Instabilities and Super-Planckian Excursions in Natural Inflation","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["astro-ph.CO","gr-qc"],"primary_cat":"hep-th","authors_text":"Andreas Albrecht, Benoit J. Richard, R. Holman","submitted_at":"2014-12-22T05:55:09Z","abstract_excerpt":"Models such as Natural Inflation that use Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (PNGB's) as the inflaton are attractive for many reasons. However, they typically require trans-Planckian field excursions $\\Delta \\Phi>M_{\\rm Pl}$, due to the need for an axion decay constant $f>M_{\\rm Pl}$ to have both a sufficient number of e-folds {\\em and} values of $n_s,\\ r$ consistent with data. Such excursions would in general require the addition of all other higher dimension operators consistent with symmetries, thus disrupting the required flatness of the potential and rendering the theory non-predictive. We sho"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1412.6879","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}