Related papers: Tensor Detection Severely Constrains Axion Dark Ma…
Ignorance of the initial condition for the axion dynamics in the early Universe has led us to consider an $O(1)$ valued initial amplitude, and that prefers the decay constant, $F_a$, of the QCD axion to be an intermediate scale such as…
It is widely believed that string theory easily allows for a QCD axion in the cosmologically favoured mass range. The required small decay constant, $f_a\ll M_P$, can be implemented by using a large compactification volume. This points to…
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…
If there are a plethora of axions in nature, they may have a complicated potential and create an axion landscape. We study a possibility that one of the axions is so light that it is cosmologically stable, explaining the observed dark…
Light scalar and pseudoscalar particles are compelling dark matter candidates, with a vast running experimental program to discover them. Previous studies have shown that these light fields can generate sizable isocurvature perturbations in…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) might constitute the totality of the cold dark matter (CDM) observed. The parameter space of ALPs depends on the mass of the particle $m$ and on the energy scale of inflation $H_I$ , the latter being bound by the…
Last year we argued that if slow-roll inflation followed the decay of a false vacuum in a large landscape, the steepening of the scalar potential between the inflationary plateau and the barrier generically leads to a potentially observable…
The recently proposed dark dimension scenario reveals that axions can be localized on the Standard Model brane, thereby predicting the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion decay constant from the Weak Gravity Conjecture: $f_a\lesssim M_5 \sim…
For the minimal QCD axion model it is generally believed that overproduction of dark matter constrains the axion mass to be above a certain threshold, or at least that the initial misalignment angle must be tuned if the mass is below that…
We calculate the production of a massive vector boson by quantum fluctuations during inflation. This gives a novel dark-matter production mechanism quite distinct from misalignment or thermal production. While scalars and tensors are…
Axion-like particles are promising candidates to make up the dark matter of the universe, but it is challenging to design experiments that can detect them over their entire allowed mass range. Dark matter in general, and in particular…
The QCD axion and axion-like particles, as leading dark matter candidates, can also have interesting implications for dark matter substructures if the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken after inflation. In such a scenario, axion perturbations…
A popular proposal for resolving the Hubble tension involves an early phase of dark energy, driven by an axion field with a periodic potential. In this paper, we argue that these models are tightly constrained by the axion weak gravity…
String scenarios generically predict that we live in a so called axiverse: the Universe with about a hundred of light axion species which are decoupled from the Standard Model particles. However, the axions can couple to the inflaton which…
A number of proposed and ongoing experiments search for axion dark matter with a mass nearing the limit set by small scale structure (${\cal O} ( 10 ^{ - 21 } {\rm eV} ) $). We consider the late universe cosmology of these models, showing…
The QCD axion stands as one of the most promising candidates for resolving the strong CP problem. However, the value of the axion's decay constant $f_a$ and, by extension, its mass $m_a$, remain uncertain within the framework of effective…
Dark matter (DM) is a new type of invisible matter introduced to explain various features of recent astrophysical observations, including galaxy rotation curves and other fundamental characteristics of our universe. DM may couple to…
We exploit the complementarity among supersymmetry, inflation, axions, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) to constrain supersymmetric axion models in the light of the recent Planck and BICEP…
The QCD axion is one of the best motivated dark matter candidates. The misalignment mechanism is well known to produce an abundance of the QCD axion consistent with dark matter for an axion decay constant of order $10^{12}$ GeV. For a…
I present the first constraints on QCD axion dark matter using measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope. By utilizing publicly available MIRI and NIRSpec blank-sky observations, originally collected for sky subtraction purposes, I…