Large Volume Axionic Swiss-Cheese Inflation

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of embedding inflation within string theory by working in the Large Volume Scenario on Swiss Cheese Calabi-Yau orientifolds in Type IIB string theory. It shows that slow-roll axionic inflation can be realized with NS-NS axions when perturbative and non-perturbative alpha-prime corrections to the Kähler potential and instanton-generated superpotentials are included, with one- and two-loop corrections playing a subdominant role. A de Sitter minimum is achieved without anti-D3 brane uplifting, and inflation proceeds along a flat NS-NS axion direction from a saddle point toward the minimum. The inflaton is identified as a linear combination of axions, and the model can yield the required number of e-foldings (around 60) given sufficiently large genus-0 GV invariants, offering a viable string-theoretic inflationary scenario without brane uplifting.

Abstract

Continuing with the ideas of (section 4 of) [1], after inclusion of perturbative and non-perturbative alpha' corrections to the Kaehler potential and (D1- and D3-) instanton generated superpotential, we show the possibility of slow-roll axionic inflation in the large volume limit of Swiss-Cheese Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications of type IIB string theory. We also include one- and two-loop corrections to the Kaehler potential but find the same to be subdominant to the (perturbative and non-perturbative) alpha' corrections. The NS-NS axions provide a flat direction for slow-roll inflation to proceed from a saddle point to the nearest dS minimum.