Multi-field Inflation in High-Slope Potentials
  We present two families of multi-field potentials that support inflation
while satisfying the refined de Sitter and the distance swampland conjectures.
Both families feature Planck-compatible phenomenology. The first is a
helix-type potential, in a flat field-space metric, that satisfies the
conjectures via a high turning rate. This model has a tensor-toscalar ratio
close to, but below, the current experimental limits and small
non-gaussianities. The second family, an example of orbital inflation, utilizes
a negatively curved field metric to achieve prolonged inflation with nontrivial
turning in the presence of a tachyonic direction. Although perturbations in
this model undergo an exponential growth before horizon exit, it is always
possible to match the measured amplitude of the power spectrum by lowering the
scale of inflation if the turning rate is low enough. We identify a
Planck-compatible region of parameter space in which the scale of inflation is
above that of nucleosynthesis. Due to the rapid growth, this model predicts an
exponentially suppressed value for the tensor-to-scalar ratio.
