Related papers: The Axidental Universe
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…
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…
If the Universe contains at least one inflationary domain with a sufficiently large and homogeneous scalar field, then this domain permanently produces new inflationary domains of all possible types. We show that under certain conditions…
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…
Cosmological data provides us two key constraints on dark matter (DM): it must have a particular abundance, and it must have an adiabatic spectrum of density perturbations in the early universe. Many different cosmological scenarios have…
Motivated by the SU(2)$_{\rm CMB}$ modification of the cosmological model $\Lambda$CDM, we consider isolated fuzzy-dark-matter lumps, made of ultralight axion particles whose masses arise due to distinct SU(2) Yang-Mills scales and the…
The axion arises in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as an alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm to explain the nature of dark matter. In this contribution, we…
In simple inflationary cosmological scenarios the near-exponential growth can be followed by a long period in which the Universe is dominated by the oscillating inflaton condensate. The condensate is initially almost homogeneous, but…
Cosmology is nowadays going through a true revolution in the quantity and quality of observations that are capable of providing crucial information about the origin and evolution of the universe. In the first years of the next millenium we…
Many cosmological models assume or imply that the total size of the universe is very large, perhaps even infinite. Here we argue instead that the universe might be comparatively small, in fact not much larger than the currently observed…
Dark matter and cosmic inflation represent two of the major puzzles in cosmology. They are typically addressed by introducing separate fields with independent dynamics. On the other hand, extra dimensions might play an important role for…
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…
I propose a new mechanism to account for the observed tiny but finite dark energy in terms of a non-Abelian Higgs theory, which has infinitely many perturbative vacua characterized by a winding number, in the framework of inflationary…
A model for gravitational collapse where the event horizon is a quantum critical phase transition is extended to provide an explanation for the origin of the observable universe, where the expanding universe that we observe today was…
The QCD axion can solve the Strong CP Problem and be the dark matter of our universe. If the PQ symmetry breaking scale associated with the axion is below the inflationary reheating temperature, axion strings and domain walls populate the…
The vacuum is filled with complex scalar fields, such as the Higgs field. These fields serve as order parameters for superfluidity (quantum phase coherence over macroscopic distances), making the entire universe a superfluid. We review a…
In this work we introduce an effective model of $f(R)$ gravity containing a non-minimal coupling to the axion scalar field. The axion field is described by the misalignment model, in which the primordial $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn symmetry is…
We describe a general scenario, dubbed "Inflatable Dark Matter", in which the density of dark matter particles can be reduced through a short period of late-time inflation in the early universe. The overproduction of dark matter that is…
In the primordial universe, fields with mass much larger than the mass-scale of the event-horizon (such as the Hubble parameter in inflation) exist ubiquitously, and can be excited from time to time and oscillate quickly around their…
The particle that makes up the dark matter of the universe could be an axion or axion-like particle. A collection of axions can condense into a bound Bose-Einstein condensate called an axion star. It is possible that a significant fraction…