Related papers: QCD Axion and Dark Energy
I give a brief overview of recent theoretical progress within perturbative QCD concerning the high-energy dynamics in the vicinity of the unitarity limit. Special attention is payed to the most recent developments concerning the relation…
Recently, attempts have been made to understand the apparent near coincidence of the present dark energy and matter energy in terms of a dynamical attractor-like solution for the evolution of a scalar field. In these models the field…
Recently it has been argued that a possible source for the dark energy may arise due to the contribution to the vacuum energy of the QCD ghost in a time-dependent background. In this paper we establish a connection between interacting ghost…
A model of high scale inflation is presented where the radial part of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) field with a non-minimal coupling to gravity plays the role of the inflaton, and the QCD axion is the dark matter. A quantum fluctuation of…
We explore the interplay of the post-inflationary QCD axion and a light scalar field for the axion domain wall decay and dark matter (DM). The scalar field possesses a nonzero vacuum expectation value (VEV) during inflation, so that its…
The axion solution of the strong CP problem is reviewed together with the other strong CP solutions. We also point out the quintessential axion(quintaxion) whose potential can be extremely flat due to the tiny ratio of the hidden sector…
Democracy among the same type of particles is a useful paradigm in studying masses and interactions of particles with supersymmetry(SUSY) or without SUSY. This simple idea predicts the presence of massless particles. We attempt to use one…
We study the classical dynamics of a non-abelian Higgs theory coupled to gravity in an isotropic and homogeneous Universe. For non-minimal coupling, this theory leads to a model of cosmic inflation that is very attractive due to its…
Considerable theoretical efforts have gone into expanding the reach of the QCD axion beyond its canonical mass--decay-constant relation. The $Z_\mathcal{N}$ QCD axion model reduces the QCD axion mass naturally, by invoking a discrete…
We study a symmetry, schematically Energy -> - Energy, which suppresses matter contributions to the cosmological constant. The requisite negative energy fluctuations are identified with a "ghost" copy of the Standard Model. Gravity…
It has been suggested that the dark energy that explains the observed accelerating expansion of the universe may arise due to the contribution to the vacuum energy of the QCD ghost in a time-dependent background. The argument uses a…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that…
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.…
In this paper we review in detail a number of approaches that have been adopted to try and explain the remarkable observation of our accelerating Universe. In particular we discuss the arguments for and recent progress made towards…
Thus far, there does not appear to be an agreed (or adequate) definition of homogeneous dark energy (DE). This paper seeks to define a valid, adequate homogeneity condition for DE. Firstly, it is shown that as long as $w_x \neq -1$, DE must…
The analytical perturbative approach, if taken to the limit of its applicability, allows one to predict an energy independent limit for the one-particle invariant density in QCD jets E dn/d^3p at very small momenta p. This is a direct…
We discuss fits of unconventional dark energy models to the available data from high-redshift supernovae, distant galaxies and baryon oscillations. The models are based either on brane cosmologies or on Liouville strings in which a…
We revisit the recently proposed multi-natural inflation and its realization in supergravity in light of the BICEP2 results. Multi-natural inflation is a single-field inflation model where the inflaton potential consists of multiple…
If the inflaton is a pseudo-scalar axion, the axion shift symmetry can protect the flatness of its potential from too large radiative corrections. This possibility, known as natural inflation, requires an axion scale which is greater than…