Related papers: Axions as Hot and Cold Dark Matter
A light hidden photon or axion-like particle is a good dark matter candidate and they are often associated with the spontaneous breaking of dark global or gauged U(1) symmetry. We consider the dark Higgs dynamics around the phase transition…
The axion is arguably one of the best motivated candidates for dark matter. For a decay constant greater than about 10^9 GeV, axions are dominantly produced non-thermally in the early universe and hence are "cold", their velocity dispersion…
The QCD axion is a good dark matter candidate. The observed dark matter abundance can arise from misalignment or defect mechanisms, which generically require an axion decay constant $f_a \sim \mathcal{O}(10^{11})$ GeV (or higher). We…
A QCD axion with a decay constant below $ 10 ^{ 11} ~{\rm GeV} $ is a strongly-motivated extension to the Standard Model, though its relic abundance from the misalignment mechanism or decay of cosmic defects is insufficient to explain the…
There are a number of observational hints from astrophysics which point to the existence of stellar energy losses beyond the ones accounted for by neutrino emission. These excessive energy losses may be explained by the existence of a new…
We study a simple extension of the Standard Model featuring a dark sector with an ultralight pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson as dark matter candidate. We focus on the mass range $\mathcal{O}(10^{-20} - 10^{-10})$ eV, relevant for strong…
Hot axions, thermally produced in the Early Universe, would contribute to dark radiation and are thus subject to present and future constraints from $N_{\rm eff}$. In this paper we quantify the contribution to $N_{\rm eff}$ and its…
QCD axions are a well-motivated candidate for cold dark matter. Cold axions are produced in the early universe by vacuum realignment, axion string decay and axion domain wall decay. We show that cold axions thermalize via their…
Non-supersymmetric Grand Unified $SO(10)\times U(1)_{\rm PQ}$ models have all the ingredients to solve several fundamental problems of particle physics and cosmology -- neutrino masses and mixing, baryogenesis, the non-observation of strong…
We study phenomenological implications of an axion that arises as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson due to the spontaneous breaking of anomaly-free global flavor symmetry. One interesting possibility for such anomaly-free axion to explain dark…
This talk focuses on the role of light scalars in cosmology, both Nambu Goldstone bosons and pseudo moduli. The former include QCD axions, which might constitute the dark matter, and more general axions, which, under certain conditions,…
Axion cosmology is reexamined taking into account effect of kinetic pseudo Nambu-Goldstone modes, with its importance recently pointed out. When Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is broken by a chiral U(1) singlet, it is found that the effect of…
A sterile neutrino with a keV-scale mass is a compelling dark matter candidate. We propose a new production mechanism involving the decay and annihilation of a complex scalar singlet with a Higgs portal coupling which develops a vacuum…
We suggest that dark matter can be identified with a stable composite fermion X^0, that arises within the holographic AdS/CFT models, where the Higgs boson emerges as a composite pseudo-goldstone boson. The predicted properties of X^0…
We investigate the possibility that the Peccei-Quinn phase transition occurs at a temperature far below the symmetry breaking scale. Low phase transition temperatures are typical in supersymmetric theories, where symmetry breaking fields…
We study the effect of the late decaying saxino (the scalar superpartner of the axion) and find out that there is a possible dark matter solution from a class of supersymmetric extensions of the invisible axion model. In this class of…
The strong CP problem of QCD is at heart a problem of naturalness: why is the F\tilde{F} term highly suppressed in the QCD Lagrangian when it seems necessary to explain why there are three and not four light pions? The most elegant solution…
Relativistic axions are good candidates for the dark radiation for which there are mounting observational hints. The primordial decays of heavy fields produce axions which are ultra-energetic compared to thermalised matter and inelastic…
The dark dimension scenario, which is motivated from Swampland principles and predicts a single micron scale extra dimension, suggests a consistent framework for the dark sector of the universe. We consider the implications of this scenario…
The cosmological scenario where the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken after inflation is investigated. In this scenario, topological defects such as strings and domain walls produce a large number of axions, which contribute to the cold dark…