Related papers: Axion Kinetic Misalignment Mechanism
We study axion dark matter production from a misalignment mechanism in scenarios featuring a general nonstandard cosmology. Before the onset of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the energy density of the universe is dominated by a particle field…
We review current cosmological constraints on the axion. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, focussing on the standard thermal scenario where the dominant process is through axion radiation by…
We consider Dark Matter composed of an oscillating singlet scalar field. On top of the mass term, the scalar is equipped with a potential spontaneously breaking Z_2-symmetry. This potential dominates at early times and leads to the…
It is often the case that scalar fields are produced in the early Universe in the form of coherent oscillation. These scalar fields may have huge abundances and affect the evolution of the Universe. In particular, if the lifetime is long…
Coherent oscillations of a scalar field can mimic the behavior of a perfect fluid with an equation-of-state parameter determined by the properties of the potential, possibly driving accelerated expansion in the early Universe (inflation)…
A mechanism for lifting the cosmological upper bound on the axion decay constant, $f_a$, is proposed. It entails the near masslessness of the radial mode whose vacuum expectation value is $f_a$. Energy in the coherent oscillations of the…
We argue that coherent oscillations of the axion field excited by the misalignment mechanism and non-thermal leptogenesis by the saxion decay can naturally explain the observed abundance of dark matter and baryon asymmetry, thus providing a…
Two populations of axions can contribute to cold dark matter: the classical field produced via the misalignment mechanism, and the modes produced in the decay of strings. The classical field has extra pressure, as compared to WIMPs, which…
We study the system of interacting axions and magnetic fields in the early universe after the quantum chromodynamics phase transition, when axions acquire masses. Both axions and magnetic fields are supposed to be spatially inhomogeneous.…
Nonlinearities in a realistic axion field potential may play an important role in the cosmological dynamics. In this paper we use the Boltzmann code CLASS to solve the background and linear perturbations evolution of an axion field and…
We investigate the phenomenology induced by generic PQ-breaking operators within the axion kinetic misalignment framework. We analyze their impact on the relic density of axion dark matter (DM), the PQ quality problem, axion-mediated…
A cold relic axion condensate resulting from vacuum misalignment in the early universe oscillates with a frequency \sim m_a, where m_a is the axion mass. We summarize how the properties of photons propagating in such a medium are modified.…
Axions are some of the best motivated particles beyond the Standard Model. We show how the attractive self-interactions of dark matter (DM) axions over a broad range of masses, from $10^{-22}$ eV to $10^7$ GeV, can lead to nongravitational…
Cosmological axions, an important dark matter candidate, are generated when a scalar field with a spontaneously broken O(2) invariance develops an explicitly O(2)-breaking tilt cosmologically, leading to coherent production of…
The baryon asymmetry of the universe may be explained by rotations of the QCD axion in field space and baryon number violating processes. We consider the minimal extension of the Standard Model by a non-Abelian gauge interaction, $SU(2)_R$,…
The axion kinetic misalignment mechanism (KMM) opens the possibility of explaining dark matter for almost any axion mass and decay constant that are not accessible by the standard misalignment mechanism, in particular at low values of 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…
The misalignment mechanism for axion production depends on the temperature-dependent axion mass. The latter has recently been determined within the interacting instanton liquid model (IILM), and provides for the first time a well-motivated…
Generalised axion-like scalar fields provide a well-motivated framework for describing the late-time acceleration of the Universe. As the field evolves, it rolls down its potential and, depending on its mass and initial conditions, it may…
Gravitational waves provide a novel way to probe axions or axion-like particles coupled to a dark photon field, even in the absence of couplings to Standard Model particles. In the conventional misalignment mechanism, the generation of an…