Related papers: The Irreducible Axion Background
Observations of the cosmological large-scale structure provide well-established neutrino mass limits. We extend this argument to thermal relic axions. We calculate the axion thermal freeze-out temperature and thus their cosmological…
We derive conservative upper limits on the dark-matter--nucleon scattering cross-section for sub-GeV mass dark matter. Working exclusively within the low-energy chiral effective theory, we derive bounds that are independent of the details…
The recently discovered 3.5 keV X-ray line from extragalactic sources may be evidence of dark matter scatterings or decays. We show that dark atoms can be the source of the emission, through their hyperfine transitions, which would be the…
If axions exist, they are copiously produced in hot and dense plasmas, carrying away energy directly from the interior of stars. Various astronomical observables constrain the operation of such anomalous stellar energy-loss channels and…
We study cosmological solutions of (pseudo)scalar theories with periodic potentials, in the presence of arbitrary cosmological fluids -- including a cosmological constant of either sign. Independently of the initial misalignment angle and…
The default assumption of early universe cosmology is that the postinflationary universe was radiation dominated until it was about 47000 years old. Direct evidence for the radiation dominated epoch extends back until nucleosynthesis, which…
Ultra light particles $(m_a \sim 10^{-21}eV-10^{-22}eV)$ with axion-like couplings to other particles can be candidates for fuzzy dark matter (FDM) if the axion decay constant $f_a\sim 10^{17}GeV$. If a compact star is immersed in such a…
Generic constraints on dark photons are generally presented assuming they have Stueckelberg masses. These constraints are strengthened if instead the mass is due to the Higgs mechanism and the dark Higgs is light. First, we show that under…
We use data from observational cosmology to put constraints on higher-dimensional extensions of general relativity in which the effective four-dimensional dark-energy density (or cosmological "constant") decays with time. In particular we…
Ultralight axions and other bosons are dark matter candidates present in many high energy physics theories beyond the Standard Model. In particular, the string axiverse postulates the existence of up to $\mathcal{O}(100)$ light scalar…
Axions, grand unification, and string theory are each compelling extensions of the Standard Model. We show that combining these frameworks imposes strong constraints on the QCD axion mass. Using unitarity arguments and explicit string…
Theories with several hundred axion fields have enormous numbers of distinct meta-stable minima. A small fraction of these local minima have vacuum energy compatible with current measurements of dark energy. The potential also contains…
We reconsider entropy arguments which have been previously argued to support the idea that the dark matter constituents are primordial black holes with many solar masses. It has recently been shown that QCD axions which solve the strong CP…
A QCD axion with a decay constant below $ 10 ^{ 11} ~{\rm GeV} $ is a strongly-motivated extension to the Standard Model, though its relic abundance from the misalignment mechanism or decay of cosmic defects is insufficient to explain the…
Using the data of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we report on a search for signatures that would be suggestive of super-heavy particles decaying in the Galactic halo. From the lack of signal, we present upper limits for different energy…
A new U(1) gauge symmetry is the simplest extension of the Standard Model and has various theoretical and phenomenological motivations. In this paper, we study the cosmological constraint on the MeV scale dark photon. After the neutrino…
We consider the dimming of photons from high redshift type 1a supernovae by mixing with a pseudoscalar axion field in the intergalactic medium. We model the electron density using a lognormal probability distribution and assume frozen in…
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…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) can oscillate to photons and vice versa in electromagnetic fields. The photon-ALP oscillation provides an attractive solution to the apparent transparency of the Universe to TeV photons. The allowed parameter…
Light scalars (as the axion) with mass m ~ 10^{-22} eV forming a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) exhibit a Jeans length in the kpc scale and were therefore proposed as dark matter (DM) candidates. Our treatment here is generic, independent…