Inflation in the Time of Mixing Axions

The prospect of primordial B-mode polarization in the CMB has shifted focus on large field inflationary models in the last year. In this respect, axions represent suitable candidates, as their shift symmetry allows to control the otherwise problematic UV-behavior of large field inflatons. In this talk, we will discuss various scenarios of kinetic mixing in multi-axion systems and investigate how trans-Planckian decay constants can be generated. The field theoretic description can be nicely embedded into type II superstring theory and we conclude with some explicit examples.