A Monodromy from London

Abstract

We focus on the massive gauge theory formulation of axion monodromy inflation. We argue that a gauge symmetry hidden in these models is the key protection mechanism from dangerous corrections from both field theory and gravitational dynamics. The effective theory of large field inflation is a dual to a massive U(1) 4-form gauge theory, which is similar to a massive gauge theory description of superconductivity. The gauge theory explicitly realizes the old Julia-Toulouse proposal for a low energy description of a gauge theory in a defect condensate. While we work mostly with the example of quadratic axion potential induced by flux monodromy, we discuss how other types of potentials can arise from inclusion of gauge invariant corrections to the theory.