Related papers: Dark Matter in Axion Landscape
Axions are a theoretically promising dark matter (DM) candidate. In the presence of radiation from bright astrophysical sources at radio frequencies, nonrelativistic DM axions can undergo stimulated decay to two nearly back-to-back photons,…
One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the…
If QCD axions form a large fraction of the total mass of dark matter, then axion stars could be very abundant in galaxies. As a result, collisions with each other, and with other astrophysical bodies, can occur. We calculate the rate and…
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…
String theories suggest the existence of a plethora of axion-like fields with masses spread over a huge number of decades. Here we show that these ideas lend themselves to a model of quintessence with no super-Planckian field excursions and…
The Axion is a particle arising from the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP problem. Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking in the early universe could produce a large number of axions which would still be present today, making the axion a…
The origin of dark matter in the universe may be weakly interacting scalar particles produced by amplification of quantum fluctuations during a period of dilaton-driven inflation. We present two interesting cases, the case of small…
The string axiverse predicts a unique connection between the high scales approachable only through theory and the low energies within reach of experimental verification: a multitude of light, feebly interacting axions. In order to capture…
It has been hypothesized that dark matter is comprised of ultra-light bosons whose collective phenomena can be described as a scalar field undergoing coherent oscillations. Examples include axion and fuzzy dark matter models. In this…
We study cosmological solutions of (pseudo)scalar theories with periodic potentials, in the presence of arbitrary cosmological fluids -- including a cosmological constant of either sign. Independently of the initial misalignment angle and…
Dark matter could be a thermal relic comprised of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs), where $3 \rightarrow 2$ interactions set the relic abundance. Such interactions generically arise in theories of chiral symmetry breaking via…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…
As cosmology has entered a phase of precision experiments, the content of the universe has been established to contain interesting and not yet fully understood components, namely dark energy and dark matter. While the cause and exact nature…
The subjects of this thesis are the invisible axion and the more general family of axion-like particles. The invisible axion is a hypothetical elementary particle and a cold dark matter candidate. I present an improved computation of the…
We investigate a scenario where the dark matter of the Universe is made from very light hidden photons transforming under a $Z_{2}$-symmetry. In contrast to the usual situation, kinetic mixing is forbidden by the symmetry and the dark…
The early universe grants access to energy scales far beyond those achievable in terrestrial experiments and allows unstable Standard Model particles to play an active dynamical role. In this contribution, we focus on recent studies aimed…
We discuss the possible sources of dark matter axions in the early universe. In the standard thermal scenario, an axion string network forms at the Peccei-Quinn phase transition $T\sim \fa$ and then radiatively decays into a cosmological…
Scenarios with axion-like particles of variable masses, from the milli-eV range to ultralight, can be generated in a natural way in the context of effective field theory models with anomalous $U(1)$ gauge symmetries. They include…
The Strong CP Problem and its resolution through the existence of an axion are briefly reviewed. The combined constraints from accelerator searches, the evolution of red giants and the duration of the SN 1987a neutrino pulse require the…
Cosmology and particle physics are closer today than ever before, with several searches underway at the interface between cosmology, particle physics, and field theory. The mystery of dark matter (DM) is one of the greatest common unsolved…