Inflation at the Tip

Abstract

We study the motion of a (space filling) D3-brane at the tip of a warped deformed conifold, looking for inflationary trajectories. In our setup no anti D3-brane is present and the inflaton potential is induced by threshold corrections to the superpotential. First we study the slow roll regime and find that, allowing for fine tuning, hilltop inflation compatible with CMB data can take place. Then we consider the DBI regime and formulate a necessary condition for a phenomenologically viable inflationary stage. En passant, we propose a mechanism to cancel the large inflaton mass in the standard radial D3-anti D3-brane inflation.