We analyze the generation of seed magnetic fields during de Sitter inflation considering a noninvariant conformal term in the electromagnetic Lagrangian of the form [Formula: see text], where I(ϕ) is a pseudoscalar function of a nontrivial background field ϕ. In particular, we consider a toy model that could be realized owing to the coupling between the photon and either a (tachyonic) massive pseudoscalar field or a massless pseudoscalar field nonminimally coupled to gravity, where I follows a simple power law behavior I(k,η) = g/(-kη)β during inflation, while it is negligibly small subsequently. Here, g is a positive dimensionless constant, k the wave number, η the conformal time, and β a real positive number. We find that only when β = 1 and 0.1 ≲ g ≲ 2 can astrophysically interesting fields be produced as excitation of the vacuum, and that they are maximally helical.
Primordial magnetic fields in thef2FFmodel in large field inflation under de Sitter and power law expansion
