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Resonant backreaction in axion inflation

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arxiv 2002.02952 v2 pith:PXL5SZQA submitted 2020-02-07 astro-ph.CO hep-th

classification astro-ph.COhep-th
keywords gaugefieldinflationinflatonaxionfieldsproductionresonant
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Axion inflation entails a coupling of the inflaton field to gauge fields through the Chern-Simons term. This results in a strong gauge field production during inflation, which backreacts on the inflaton equation of motion. Here we show that this strongly non-linear system generically experiences a resonant enhancement of the gauge field production, resulting in oscillatory features in the inflaton velocity as well as in the gauge field spectrum. The gauge fields source a strongly enhanced scalar power spectrum at small scales, exceeding previous estimates. For appropriate parameter choices, the collapse of these over-dense regions can lead to a large population of (light) primordial black holes with remarkable phenomenological consequences.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Axion Inflation: Perturbative control in the strong backreaction regime

    astro-ph.CO 2026-08 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Axion inflation with strong gauge-field backreaction is generically non-perturbative for ξ ≳ 2.5, yet a newly found steady 'mild backreaction' phase at large β can stay perturbatively controlled.

  2. High-frequency gravitational waves from axion inflation in the weak-backreaction regime

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Even in the weak-backreaction regime, axion inflation produces high-frequency primordial gravitational waves many orders of magnitude above the vacuum spectrum, peaking around MHz–GHz.

  3. Axion USR Inflation

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    In axion inflation with an intermediate ultra-slow-roll phase, the instability parameter collapses at the start of USR, terminating gauge production and yielding a two-peak power spectrum with P_R ∝ k^m, m>4.

  4. Very-High-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Multi-Monodromy Inflation

    hep-ph 2026-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    In multi-stage axion monodromy inflation, an interruption 50–52 efolds before the end of inflation produces a narrow gravitational-wave background peaked at ~10–300 kHz, at strains near proposed detector sensitivities.

  5. CMB constraints on $U(1)$ axion warm inflation

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Axion-driven warm inflation with U(1) gauge fields is constrained with CMB data and remains viable for sub-Planckian decay constants, but requires large Chern-Simons couplings.

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