MOCa 2o2o: Materia Oscura en Colombia

Chiral Gravitational Waves and Primordial Black Holes in Axion Inflation

7 Oct 2020, 16:00

25m

MOCa

Speaker

Juan Pablo Beltran (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)

Description

We consider an UV-protected Natural Inflation scenario involving Chern-Simons-like interactions between the inflaton and some beyond the Standard Model gauge fields. The accelerated expansion of the Universe is supported by a combination of a gravitationally-enhanced friction sensitive to the scale of inflation and quantum friction effects associated with the explosive production of gauge fluctuations.
The synergy of these two velocity-restraining mechanisms allows for: $i)$ Natural Inflation potentials involving only sub-Planckian coupling constants, $ii)$ the generation of a dark matter component in the form of primordial black holes, and $iii)$ a potentially observable background of chiral gravitational waves at small scales.

Presentation materials

MOCa2020Axion_and_Inflation.pdf