Axion monodromy inflation with warped KK-modes

We present a particularly simple model of axion monodromy inflation: Our axion is the lowest-lying KK-mode of the RR-2-form-potential C2 in the standard Klebanov-Strassler throat. One can think of this inflaton candidate as being defined by the integral of C2 over the S2 cycle of the throat. It obtains an exponentially small mass from the IR-region in which the S2 shrinks to zero size. Crucially, the S2 cycle has to be shared between two throats, such that the second locus where the S2 shrinks is also in a warped region. Well-known problems like the potentially dangerous back-reaction of brane/antibrane pairs and explicit supersymmetry breaking are not present in our scenario. The inflaton back-reaction on the geometry turns out to be controlled by the string coupling gs. We hope that our setting is simple enough for many critical consistency issues of large-field inflation in string theory to be addressed at a quantitative level.