D7-brane chaotic inflation

We analyze string-theoretic large-field inflation in the regime of spontaneously-broken supergravity with conventional moduli stabilization by fluxes and non-perturbative effects. The main ingredient is a shift-symmetric Kahler potential, supplemented by flux-induced shift symmetry breaking in the superpotential. The central technical observation is that all these features are present for D7-brane position moduli in Type IIB orientifolds, potentially allowing for a realization of the axion monodromy proposal in a string theory compactification. Furthermore, our model is explicit enough to address issues of control and moduli stabilization quantitatively. On the one hand, in the large complex structure regime the D7-brane position moduli inherit a shift symmetry from their mirror-dual Type IIA Wilson lines. On the other hand, the Type IIB flux superpotential generically breaks this shift symmetry and allows, by appealing to the large flux discretuum, to tune the relevant coefficients to be small. The shift-symmetric direction in D7-brane moduli space can then play the role of the inflaton: While the D7-brane circles a certain trajectory on the Calabi-Yau many times, the corresponding F-term energy density grows only very slowly, thanks to the above-mentioned tuning of the flux. To be successful our model requires that the dilaton, all complex structure moduli and all D7-brane moduli except the inflaton are fixed at leading order by fluxes. Then the large-field inflationary trajectory can be realized in a regime where Kahler, complex structure and other brane moduli are stabilized in a conventional manner, as we demonstrate using the example of the Large Volume Scenario. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.