Relaxed Inflation
  We present an effective model where the inflaton is a relaxion that scans the
Higgs mass and sets it at the weak scale. The dynamics consist of a long epoch
in which inflation is due to the shallow slope of the potential, followed by a
few number of e-folds where slow-roll is maintained thanks to dissipation via
non-perturbative gauge-boson production. The same gauge bosons give rise to a
strong electric field that triggers the production of electron-positron pairs
via the Schwinger mechanism. The subsequent thermalization of these particles
provides a novel mechanism of reheating. The relaxation of the Higgs mass
occurs after reheating, when the inflaton/relaxion stops on a local minimum of
the potential. We argue that this scenario may evade phenomenological and
astrophysical bounds while allowing for the cutoff of the effective model to be
close to the Planck scale. This framework provides an intriguing connection
between inflation and the hierarchy problem.
