Bifid Throats for Axion Monodromy Inflation
  We construct a simple explicit local geometry providing a `bifid throat' for
5-brane axion monodromy. A bifid throat is a throat that splits into two
daughter throats in the IR, containing a homologous 2-cycle family reaching
down into each daughter throat. Our example consists of a deformed
$\mathbb{Z}_3\times\mathbb{Z}_2$ orbifold of the conifold, which provides us
with an explicit holographic dual of the bifid throat including D3-branes and
fractional 5-branes at the toric singularities of our setup. Having the
holographic description in terms of the dual gauge theory allows us to address
the effect of 5-brane-antibrane pair backreaction including the warping
effects. This leads to the size of the backreaction being small and
controllable after imposing proper normalization of the inflaton potential and
hence the warping scales.
