Inflaton as an auxiliary topological field in a QCD-like system
  We propose a new scenario for early cosmology, where inflationary de Sitter
phase dynamically occurs. The effect emerges as a result of dynamics of the
topologically nontrivial sectors in expanding universe. Technically the effect
can be described in terms of the auxiliary fields which effectively describe
the dynamics of the topological sectors in a gauge theory. Inflaton in this
framework is an auxiliary topological non-propagating field with no canonical
kinetic term, similar to known topologically ordered phases in condensed matter
systems. We explain many deep questions in this framework using the so-called
weakly coupled "deformed QCD" toy model.While this theory is weakly coupled
gauge theory, it preserves all the crucial elements of strongly interacting
gauge theory, including confinement, nontrivial $\theta$ dependence, degeneracy
of the topological sectors, etc. We discuss a specific realization of these
ideas using a scaled up version of QCD, coined as \qcd, with the scale
M_{PL}\gg \Lbar\gg \sqrt[3]{M_{EW}^2M_{PL}}\sim 10^8 {\mathrm{GeV}}. If no
other fields are present in the system de Sitter phase will be the final
destination of evolution of the universe. If other interactions are present in
the system, the inflationary de Sitter phase lasts for a finite period of time.
The inflation starts from the thermal equilibrium state long after the \qcd
-confinement phase transition at temperature T_{i}\sim
\Lbar\sqrt{\frac{\Lbar}{M_{PL}}}. The end of inflation is triggered by the
coupling with gauge bosons from the Standard Model. The corresponding
interaction is unambiguously fixed by the triangle anomaly. Number of e-folds
in the \qcd-inflation framework is determined by the gauge coupling constant at
the moment of inflation, and estimated as N_{\rm inf}\sim \alpha_s^{-2}\sim
10^2.
