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Very-high-frequency gravitational waves from multimonodromy inflation

Guido D’Amico1,2,*, Andrew A. Geraci3,†, Nemanja Kaloper4,‡, and Alexander Westphal5,§

  • *Contact author: guido.damico@unipr.it
  • †Contact author: andrew.geraci@northwestern.edu
  • ‡Contact author: kaloper@physics.ucdavis.edu
  • §Contact author: alexander.westphal@desy.de
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 023540 – Published 21 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q4pv-zj9c

Abstract

We show that in multistage axion monodromy inflation an interruption near the end of the penultimate stage can lead to a spike in the gravitational wave background. These gravitational waves are in the frequency range and with an amplitude accessible to proposed terrestrial detectors such as the Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, and future Levitated Sensor Detector experiments.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 023540– Published 21 July, 2026
  • Received 5 February 2026
  • Accepted 30 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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