A New Angle on Chaotic Inflation
  N-flation is a radiatively stable scenario for chaotic inflation in which the
displacements of $N \gg 1$ axions with decay constants $f_1 \le \ldots \le f_N
< M_P$ lead to a super-Planckian effective displacement equal to the
Pythagorean sum $f_{Py}$ of the $f_i$. We show that mixing in the axion kinetic
term generically leads to the phenomenon of kinetic alignment, allowing for
effective displacements as large as $\sqrt{N} f_{N} \ge f_{Py}$, even if $f_1,
\ldots, f_{N-1}$ are arbitrarily small. At the level of kinematics, the
necessary alignment occurs with very high probability, because of eigenvector
delocalization. We present conditions under which inflation can take place
along an aligned direction. Our construction sharply reduces the challenge of
realizing N-flation in string theory.
