Primordial black holes and associated gravitational waves in axion monodromy inflation

Shu-Lin Cheng, Wolung Lee, Kin-Wang Ng  2018  arXiv 1801.09050  

In the axion monodromy inflation, the inflation is driven by the axion with super-Planckian field values in a monomial potential with superimposed sinusoidal modulations. The coupling of the axion to massless gauge fields can induce copious particle production during inflation, resulting in large non-Gaussian curvature perturbation that leads to the formation of primordial black holes. In this paper, we explore the parameter space in the axion monodromy inflation model that favors the formation of primordial black holes with masses ranging from 108 grams to 20 solar masses. We also study the associated gravitational waves and their detection in pulsar timing arrays and interferometry experiments.