Related papers: The Stochastic Axiverse
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…
String theory suggests the simultaneous presence of many ultralight axions possibly populating each decade of mass down to the Hubble scale 10^-33eV. Conversely the presence of such a plenitude of axions (an "axiverse") would be evidence…
If the inflaton is a pseudo-scalar axion, the axion shift symmetry can protect the flatness of its potential from too large radiative corrections. This possibility, known as natural inflation, requires an axion scale which is greater than…
Extending the Standard Model with three right-handed neutrinos and a simple QCD axion sector can account for neutrino oscillations, dark matter and baryon asymmetry; at the same time, it solves the strong CP problem, stabilizes the…
It is difficult to construct a post-inflation QCD axion model that solves the axion quality problem (and hence the Strong CP problem) without introducing a cosmological disaster. In a post-inflation axion model, the axion field value is…
We present a novel realization of axion kinetic misalignment, triggered by a Hubble-induced phase transition during a post-inflationary stiff (kination) era. A negative Ricci scalar flips the sign of a non-minimally coupled mass term for a…
Axion rotations can simultaneously explain the dark matter abundance and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe by kinetic misalignment and axiogenesis. We consider a scenario in which the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field is as large as…
In this talk, I review briefly a scenario for the evolution of a string-inspired cosmological model, in which condensates of primordial gravitational waves (GW), formed at the very early eras after the Big Bang, are considered responsible…
The post-inflationary Peccei-Quinn symmetry-breaking scenario provides a rich theoretical framework to study axion dark matter production through the dynamics oftopological defects. Accurate predictions for the axion abundance require a…
With the advent of new missions to probe spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background with unprecedented precision, the study of theoretical predictions of these signals becomes a promising avenue to test our description of the…
We explore the phenomenology of QCD axion and axion-like particle (ALP) dark matter production via misalignment during inflationary reheating. We investigate scenarios involving inflaton oscillating in a generic potential $\sim \phi^n$,…
If inflation scale is high, light scalars acquire large quantum fluctuations during inflation.If sufficiently long-lived, they will give rise to CDM isocurvature perturbations, which are highly constrained by the Planck data. Focusing on…
New particles coupled to the Standard Model can equilibrate in stellar cores if they are sufficiently heavy and strongly coupled. In this work, we investigate the astrophysical consequences of such a scenario for massive stars by…
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 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…
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…
We discuss some cosmological aspects of supersymmetric axion models in which the axion scale is radiatively generated in terms of the weak scale and the Planck scale. They include thermal inflation, axions produced by the decay of…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
The electric Weak Gravity Conjecture demands that axions with large decay constant $f$ couple to light instantons. The resulting large instantonic corrections pose problems for natural inflation. We explore an alternative argument based on…