D7-Brane Chaotic Inflation
  We analyze string-theoretic large-field inflation in the regime of
spontaneously-broken supergravity with conventional moduli stabilization by
fluxes and non-perturbative effects. The main ingredient is a shift-symmetric
Kahler potential, supplemented by flux-induced shift symmetry breaking in the
superpotential. The central technical observation is that all these features
are present for D7-brane position moduli in Type IIB orientifolds, allowing for
a realization of the axion monodromy proposal in a controlled string theory
compactification. On the one hand, in the large complex structure regime the
D7-brane position moduli inherit a shift symmetry from their mirror-dual Type
IIA Wilson lines. On the other hand, the Type IIB flux superpotential
generically breaks this shift symmetry and allows, by appealing to the large
flux discretuum, to tune the relevant coefficients to be small. The
shift-symmetric direction in D7-brane moduli space can then play the role of
the inflaton: While the D7-brane circles a certain trajectory on the Calabi-Yau
many times, the corresponding F-term energy density grows only very slowly,
thanks to the above-mentioned tuning of the flux. Thus, the large-field
inflationary trajectory can be realized in a regime where Kahler, complex
structure and other brane moduli are stabilized in a conventional manner, as we
demonstrate using the example of the Large Volume Scenario.
