Aligned natural inflation: Monodromies of two axions

Abstract

Natural (axionic) inflation [1] can accommodate sizeable primordial tensor modes but suffers from the necessity of trans-Planckian variations of the inflaton field. This problem can be solved via the mechanism of aligned axions [2], where the aligned axion spirals down in the potential of other axions. We elaborate on the mechanism in view of the recently reported observations of the BICEP2 collaboration [3].