Related papers: Cosmological bounds on sub-MeV mass axions
The small-scale power spectrum of the cosmological matter distribution together with other cosmological data provides a sensitive measure of the hot dark matter fraction, leading to restrictive neutrino mass limits. We extend this argument…
Searches for dark matter decaying into photons constrain its lifetime to be many orders of magnitude larger than the age of the Universe. A corollary statement is that the abundance of any particle that can decay into photons over…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) decaying into photons are known to affect a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological observables. In this study we focus on ALPs with masses in the keV-MeV range and lifetimes between $10^4$ and $10^{13}$…
The observed properties of stars and especially the neutrino signal of the supernova 1987A provide an upper limit to the axion mass, while the age and expansion rate of the universe provide a lower limit. There remains a "window of…
Relic thermal axions could play the role of an extra hot dark matter component in cosmological structure formation theories. By combining the most recent observational data we improve previous cosmological bounds on the axion mass m_a in…
We revisit the joint constraints in the mixed hot dark matter scenario in which both thermally produced QCD axions and relic neutrinos are present. Upon recomputing the cosmological axion abundance via recent advances in the literature, we…
The best upper bounds on the masses of stable and unstable light neutrinos derive from the upper bound on the total mass density, as inferred from the lower limit $t_0> 13$ Gyr on the dynamical age of the Universe: If the Universe is…
Motivated by a possible $\sim$ eV-mass solar axion explanation to excess events recently detected by the XENON1T experiment, I revisit and update cosmological constraints on axions in this mass range. I find that of the allowed XENON1T mass…
In theories of axion dark matter with large axion decay constant, temperature variations in the CMB are extremely sensitive to perturbations in the initial axion field, allowing one to place a lower bound on the total amount of inflation.…
We give updated constraints on hypothetical light bosons with a two-photon coupling such as axions or axion-like particles (ALPs). We focus on masses and lifetimes where decays happen near big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), thus altering the…
Axion-like particles with masses in the keV-GeV range have a profound impact on the cosmological evolution of our Universe, in particular on the abundance of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The resulting limits are…
Future cosmological data may be sensitive to the effects of a finite sum of neutrino masses even as small as ~0.06 eV, the lower limit guaranteed by neutrino oscillation experiments. We show that a cosmological detection of neutrino mass at…
With the advent of precision data, cosmology has become an extremely powerful tool for probing particle physics. The prime example of this is the cosmological bound on light neutrino masses. Here I review the current status of cosmological…
We review current cosmological constraints on the axion. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, focussing on the standard thermal scenario where the dominant process is through axion radiation by…
We use cosmological observations in the post-Planck era to derive limits on thermally produced cosmological axions. In the early universe such axions contribute to the radiation density and later to the hot dark matter fraction. We find an…
We present cosmological constraints on the sum of neutrino masses as a function of the neutrino lifetime, in a framework in which neutrinos decay into dark radiation after becoming non-relativistic. We find that in this regime the cosmic…
It is attractive to suppose for several astrophysical reasons that the universe has close to the critical density in light (~30 eV) neutrinos which decay radiatively with a lifetime of ~10^{23} sec. In such a cosmology the universe is…
We consider cosmological consequences of the spontaneous breaking of a global symmetry that is anomalous under technicolor interactions, leading to the emergence of a light axion-like particle. Avoiding overclosure of the universe by such…
We investigate the radiative decay of the cosmic neutrino background, and its impact on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that is known to be a nearly perfect black body. We derive exact formulae for the decay of a…
Observations of the cosmological large-scale structure provide well-established neutrino mass limits. We extend this argument to thermal relic axions. We calculate the axion thermal freeze-out temperature and thus their cosmological…