Related papers: Relaxing Isocurvature Bounds on String Axion Dark …
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…
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 fluctuations generated during inflation lead to isocurvature and non-Gaussian temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Following a previous analysis for the model independent string axion we consider the…
Axion dark matter in high-scale inflation is subject to the isocurvature constraint, since quantum fluctuations of the axion field during inflation may exceed the current CMB bound. One conventional way to suppress these fluctuations is to…
The QCD axion solves the strong CP problem and represents an attractive particle candidate for cold dark matter (CDM). However, quantum fluctuations of the axion field during inflation easily result in large CDM isocurvature perturbations…
String and M-theory compactifications generically have compact moduli which can potentially act as the QCD axion. However, as demonstrated here, such a compact modulus can not play the role of a QCD axion and solve the strong CP problem if…
The axion is one of the best motivated candidates for particle dark matter. We study and update the constraints imposed by the recent CMB and LSS experiments on the mass of axions produced by the misalignment mechanism, as a function of…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
We propose a novel mechanism to suppress the isocurvature perturbations of the QCD axion. The point is that the QCD interactions become strong at an intermediate or high energy scale in the very early Universe, if the Higgs field has a…
Ultra-light axions ($m_a\lesssim 10^{-18}$eV), motivated by string theory, can be a powerful probe of the energy scale of inflation. In contrast to heavier axions the isocurvature modes in the ultra-light axions can coexist with observable…
A direct coupling between the inflaton and Standard Model gluons can dynamically raise the QCD confinement scale during inflation, making the axion temporarily heavy and suppressing axion isocurvature perturbations. As inflation proceeds,…
We revisit the isocurvature density perturbations induced by quantum fluctuations of the axion field by extending a recently developed analytic method and approximations to a time-dependent scalar potential, which enables us to follow the…
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…
We study the cosmology of axions in the post-inflationary scenario, where random initial conditions and the ensuing string-domain-wall network generate an isocurvature power spectrum. Axions radiated from strings behave as warm, wave-like…
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…
If a light axion is present during inflation and becomes part of dark matter afterwards, its quantum fluctuations contribute to dark matter isocurvature. In this article, we introduce a whole new suite of cosmological observables for axion…
We assume axion-like particles (ALPs) to provide the full dark matter abundance and derive various lower bounds on the ALP mass. We contrast the post- and pre-inflationary symmetry breaking cases and present allowed regions in the plane of…
We assume that dark matter is comprised of axion-like particles (ALPs) generated by the realignment mechanism in the post-inflationary scenario. This leads to isocurvature fluctuations with an amplitude of order one for scales comparable to…
Observable primordial tensor modes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would point to a high scale of inflation $H_{I}$. If the scale of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) breaking $f_a$ is greater than $\frac{H_{I}}{2\pi}$, CMB constraints on…
Cosmological colliders can preserve information from interactions at very high energy scale, and imprint them on cosmological observables. Taking the squeezed limit of cosmological perturbation bispectrum, information of the intermediate…