Strong Backreaction Regime in Axion Inflation.

We study the nonlinear dynamics of axion inflation, capturing for the first time the inhomogeneity and full dynamical range during strong backreaction, till the end of inflation. Accounting for inhomogeneous effects leads to a number of new relevant results, compared to spatially homogeneous studies: (i) the number of extra efoldings beyond slow-roll inflation increases very rapidly with the coupling, (ii) oscillations of the inflaton velocity are attenuated, (iii) the tachyonic gauge field helicity spectrum is smoothed out (i.e.