‘bubble bubble toil and trouble’

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2005/07/007 Abstract. In the model of chain inflation, a sequential chain of coupled scalar fields drives inflation. We consider a multidimensional potential with a large number of bowls, or local minima, separated by energy barriers: inflation takes place as the system tunnels from the highest energy bowl to another bowl of lower energy, and so on until it reaches the zero-energy ground state. Such a scenario can be motivated by the many vacua in the stringy landscape, and our model can apply to other multidimensional potentials. The ‘graceful exit ’ problem of old inflation is resolved since reheating is easily achieved at each stage. Coupling between the fields is crucial to the scenario. The model is quite generic and succeeds for natural couplings and parameters. Chain inflation succeeds for a wide variety of energy scales—for potentials ranging from 10 MeV scale inflation to 1016 GeV scale inflation