Related papers: Axion Flux Monodromy Discharges Relax the Cosmolog…
We present a theory with axion flux monodromies coupled to gravity, that reduces to the local vacuum energy sequester below the axion mass scales. If the axion potentials include a term generated by nonperturbative couplings to gauge…
The recently proposed relaxion models require extremely large trans-Planckian axion excursions as well as a potential explicitly violating the axion shift symmetry. The latter property is however inconsistent with the axion periodicity,…
Field theory models of axion monodromy have been shown to exhibit vacuum energy sequestering as an emergent phenomenon for cancelling radiative corrections to the cosmological constant. We study one loop corrections to this class of models…
We examine implications of the weak gravity conjecture for the mechanisms for discharging cosmological constant via membrane nucleations. Once screening fluxes and membranes which source them enter, and weak gravity bounds are enforced, a…
We present a model that naturally tunes a large positive cosmological constant to a small cosmological constant. A slowly rolling scalar field decreases the cosmological constant to a small negative value, causing the universe to contract,…
Mechanisms that dynamically relax the vacuum energy offer a concrete way to approach the cosmological constant problem, but because relaxation is not confined to the vacuum energy alone it can have consequences for the rest of low-energy…
We show that a pair of field theory monodromies in which the shift symmetry is broken by small, well motivated deformations, naturally incorporates a mechanism for cancelling off radiative corrections to the cosmological constant. The…
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 present a new mechanism to deplete the energy density of the QCD axion, making decay constants as high as $f_a \simeq 10^{17}\,\rm{GeV}$ viable for generic initial conditions. In our setup, the axion couples to a massless dark photon…
We describe a mechanism that drives the Cosmological Constant to zero value. This mechanism is based on the quantum triviality of $\lambda \phi^4$ field theory and works in $AdS$ space. Some subtleties of the model are discussed.
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
We study the cosmological evolution of the QCD axion coupled to hidden photons. For a moderately strong coupling, the motion of the axion field leads to an explosive production of hidden photons by tachyonic instability. We use lattice…
A four-form gauge flux makes a variable contribution to the cosmological constant. This has often been assumed to take continuous values, but we argue that it has a generalized Dirac quantization condition. For a single flux the steps are…
String theory axions are interesting candidates for fields whose potential might be controllable over super-Planckian field ranges and therefore as possible candidates for inflatons in large field inflation. Axion monodromy scenarios are…
Within conventional big bang cosmology, it has proven to be very difficult to understand why today's cosmological constant is so small. In this paper, we show that a cyclic model of the universe can naturally incorporate a dynamical…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is described, using a superconducting analogy in which fermions coupled to gravitons are in an unstable false vauum. The coupling of the fermions to gravitons and a screened attractive…
We demonstrate that there exists a large class of action functionals of the scalar curvature and of the Gauss-Bonnet invariant which are able to relax dynamically a large cosmological constant (CC), whatever it be its starting value in the…
We consider a dynamical approach to the cosmological constant. There is a scalar field with a potential whose minimum occurs at a generic, but negative, value for the vacuum energy, and it has a non-standard kinetic term whose coefficient…
This paper is concerned with string cosmology and the dynamics of multiple scalar fields in potentials that can become negative, and their features as (Early) Dark Energy models. Our point of departure is the "String Axiverse", a scenario…
We revisit axion monodromy inflation in the context of UV-inspired models and point out that its cosmological observables are sensitive to heavy fields with masses far above the Hubble scale, such as the moduli of flux compactifications. By…