Inflation from Anomalies

Abstract

We review a string-inspired model of inflation which is a consequence of condensates of chiral gravitational waves (GW) in the primordial Universe, leading in turn to a (approximately) constant condensate of a gravitational anomaly term of Chern-Simons (CS) type, present in the Lagrangian density that describes the dynamics of the very early Universe in the model. We discuss some mechanisms for the production of chiral GW, as well as the role of periodic modulations of the potential of the gravitational axion field, that couples to the CS anomaly term, in ensuring the correct inflationary slow-roll phenomenology of this model.