Constraining hybrid natural inflation with recent CMB data

Abstract

We study the Hybrid Natural Inflation (HNI) model and some of its realisations in the light of recent CMB observations, mainly Planck temperature and WMAP-9 polarization, and compare with the recent release of BICEP2 dataset. The inflationary sector of HNI is essentially given by the potential V(ϕ) = V0(1+acos(ϕ/f)), where a is a positive constant smaller or equal to one and f is the scale of (pseudo Nambu-Goldstone) symmetry breaking. We show that to describe the HNI model realisations we only need two observables; the spectral index ns, the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and a free parameter in the amplitude of the cosine function a. We find that in order to make the HNI model compatible with the BICEP2 observations, we require a large positive running of the spectra. We find that this could over-produce primordial black holes (PBHs) in the most theoretically consistent case of the model. This situation could be alleviated if, as recently argued, the BICEP2 data do not correspond to primordial gravitational waves.