English

"Invisible" QCD axion rolling through the QCD phase transition

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2018-07-19 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Lattice

Abstract

Visible matter in the current Universe is a consequence of the phase transition of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This phase transition has occurred at the Universe temperature around Tc165T_c\simeq 165\,MeV while it was expanding. Strongly interacting matter particles are quarks above TcT_c, while they are pions, protons and neutrons below TcT_c. The spin degrees of freedom 37 in the quark and gluon phase just above TcT_c are converted to 3 (pions) after the phase transition. This phase transition might have been achieved mostly at supercooled temperatures. The supercooling was provided by the expansion of the Universe. We obtain the effective bubble formation rate α(T)1045\alpha(T)\approx 10^{4-5}\,MeV and the completion temperature of the phase change (to the hadronic phase), Tf126T_f\simeq 126\,MeV. During the phase transition, the scale factor RR has increased by a factor of 2.4. This provides a key knowledge on the energy density of "invisible" QCD axion at the full hadronic-phase commencement temperature TfT_f, and allows for us to estimate the current energy density of cold dark matter composed of "invisible" QCD axions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.05173,
  title  = {"Invisible" QCD axion rolling through the QCD phase transition},
  author = {Jihn E. Kim and Se-Jin Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.05173},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

LateX file of 10 pages and 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:23:32.523Z