Related papers: Coronal heating problem solution by means of axion…
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…
The corona of the Sun is dominated by emission from loop-like structures. When observed in X-ray or extreme ultraviolet emission, these million K hot coronal loops show a more or less constant cross section. In this study we show how the…
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…
First, we briefly review the solar abundance problem and its current status. We start with the description of the existing theoretical model of the Sun and its main uncertainties and proceed with the discussion of the observational evidence…
A rapid phase of accelerated expansion in the early universe, known as inflation, dilutes all matter except the vacuum induced quantum fluctuations. These are responsible for seeding the initial perturbations in the baryonic matter, the…
An argument is presented that the dark matter is axions, at least in part. It has three steps. First, axions behave differently from the other forms of cold dark matter because they form a rethermalizing Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).…
An ultra-light axion field with mass $\sim 10^{-22}\ {\rm eV}$, also known as wave or fuzzy dark matter, has been proposed as a component of the dark matter in the Universe. We study the evolution of the axion dark matter distribution in…
Relativistic axions are good candidates for the dark radiation for which there are mounting observational hints. The primordial decays of heavy fields produce axions which are ultra-energetic compared to thermalised matter and inelastic…
Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude…
The axion is a highly motivated elementary particle which could address two fundamental questions in physics - the strong CP problem and the dark matter mystery. Experimental searches for this hypothetical particle have started to reach…
Axions are a natural consequence of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism, the most compelling solution to the strong-CP problem. Similar axion-like particles (ALPs) also appear in a number of possible extensions of the Standard Model, notably in…
Context. The corona of the Sun is the part of the solar atmosphere with temperatures of over one million Kelvin, which needs to be heated internally in order to exist. This heating mechanism remains a mystery; we see large magnetically…
We investigate a novel technique for the astrophysical detection of axions or axion-like particles in the dark matter halo of the Milky Way based on stimulated decay of axions, which we call axion gegenschein emission. Photons from the…
We examine the suggestion that most of the hot plasma in the Sun's corona comes from type II spicule material that is heated as it is ejected from the chromosphere. This contrasts with the traditional view that the corona is filled via…
It is well known that current spectroscopic determinations of the chemical composition of the Sun are starkly at odds with the metallicity implied by helioseismology. We investigate whether the discrepancy may be due to conversion of…
The EUI instrument on the Solar Orbiter spacecraft has obtained the most stable, high-resolution images of the solar corona from its orbit with a perihelion near 0.4 AU. A sequence of 360 images obtained at 17.1 nm, between 25-Oct-2022…
The axion particle is the outcome of the proposed Peccei-Quinn mechanism for solving the strong CP problem. Axion is also a popular dark matter candidate. Thus there is an increased interest in establishing its existence. Axions couple to…
Solar filaments, also called solar prominences when appearing above the solar limb, are cold, dense materials suspended in the hot tenuous solar corona, consisting of numerous long, fibril-like threads. These threads are the key to…
Several mechanisms have been proposed to account for the formation of solar prominences or filaments, among which direct injection and evaporation-condensation models are the two most popular ones. In the direct injection model, cold plasma…
By coupling to both the Higgs and electroweak gauge sectors, an axion can generate the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe via electroweak baryogenesis when the axion decay constant lies within the range of approximately $10^5$ and…