English

Strong CP from a Hidden Chiral Condensate

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-03-27 v2

Abstract

Models which solve the strong CP problem by employing discrete spacetime symmetries generically suffer fine-tuning and quality problems. We demonstrate that these issues are greatly ameliorated when the only source of spontaneous CP breaking is from the chiral condensate of a strongly coupled hidden sector. This is shown explicitly in a model with the SM extended by a vector-like quark family and a complex scalar portal to QCD-like dark sector with NfN_f families of dark fermions that confines at a high scale. The dark pions of the hidden sector are natural dark matter candidates, with the correct relic abundance obtained via freeze-in. These "confining" Nelson-Barr solutions connect phenomenological questions regarding the strong CP problem to recent developments in the understanding of confining gauge theories, and present ample room for further model building.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.15935,
  title  = {Strong CP from a Hidden Chiral Condensate},
  author = {Csaba Csáki and Samuel Homiller and Taewook Youn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.15935},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

19 pages, 3 figures, matches version published in JHEP

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:12:04.392Z