Related papers: The Stochastic Axion Scenario
If dark matter is made of QCD axions, its abundance is determined by the vacuum expectation value acquired by the axion field during inflation. The axion is usually assumed to follow the equilibrium distribution arising from quantum…
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…
We propose a new mechanism to suppress the axion isocurvature perturbation, while producing the right amount of axion dark matter, within the framework of supersymmetric axion models with the axion scale induced by supersymmetry breaking.…
In addition to spectacular signatures such as black hole superradiance and the rotation of CMB polarization, the plenitude of axions appearing in the string axiverse may have potentially dangerous implications. An example is the…
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…
A kinetic mixing between the axion and the inflaton allows for a production of axion dark matter even if the inflationary Hubble scale is smaller than the zero-temperature axion mass. We analyze the axion dynamics in this recently…
We study the stochastic axion dark matter scenario in the axion landscape, where one of the axions is light and stable and therefore explains dark matter. If the axion mass at the potential is a typical value of the curvature along the…
Several theoretical motivations point to ultralight QCD axions with large decay constants $f_a \simeq \mathcal{O}(10^{16}-10^{17})$ GeV, to which experimental proposals are dedicated. This regime is known to face the problem of…
We propose a new mechanism to produce axion dark matter from inflationary fluctuations. Quantum fluctuations during inflation are strengthened by a coupling of the axion kinetic term to the inflaton, which we parametrize as an effective…
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…
We show that the upper bound of the classical QCD axion window can be significantly relaxed for low-scale inflation. If the Gibbons-Hawking temperature during inflation is lower than the QCD scale, the initial QCD axion misalignment angle…
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…
We consider the production of axion dark matter through the misalignment mechanism in the context of a nonstandard cosmological history involving early matter domination by a scalar field with a time-dependent decay rate. In cases where the…
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…
Constraints on inflationary scenarios and isocurvature perturbations have excluded the simplest and most generic models of dark matter based on QCD axions. Considering non-minimal kinetic couplings of scalar fields to gravity substantially…
A new mechanism for producing axion dark matter is proposed. By invoking low-scale inflation and a kinetic mixing between the axion and the inflaton, it is shown that the axion is driven to a field point slightly displaced from the…
We study minimal versions of Higgs inflation in the presence of a massless QCD axion. While the inflationary energy scale of the metric variant is too high to accommodate isocurvature bounds, it was argued that Palatini Higgs inflation…
The current cosmological constraints on a dark matter axion are reviewed. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, both in the standard thermal scenario in which axion strings form and in…
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…
The abundance of the QCD axion is known to be suppressed if the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is lower than the QCD scale, and if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We show that the tight upper bound on the inflation…