Related papers: A mass for the dual axion
We show that axions interacting with abelian gauge fields obtain a potential from loops of magnetic monopoles. This is a consequence of the Witten effect: the axion field causes the monopoles to acquire an electric charge and alters their…
When supersymmetry is broken by condensates with a single condensing gauge group, there is a nonanomalous R-symmetry that prevents the universal axion from acquiring a mass. It has been argued that, in the context of supergravity, higher…
Axions, periodic scalar fields coupled to gauge fields through the instanton density, have a rich variety of higher-form global symmetries. These include a two-form global symmetry, which measures the charge of axion strings. As we review,…
Axions can naturally be very light due to the protection of an (approximate) shift symmetry. Because of their pseudoscalar nature, the long-range force mediated by the axion at tree level is spin dependent, which cannot lead to observable…
A gauge invariant formulation for the massive axion is considered. The axion acquires mass through a topological term which couples a (pseudo)scalar and a third rank antisymmetric tensor. Duality, local and canonical equivalences with the…
The axion photon system in an external magnetic field, when for example considered with the geometry of the experiments exploring axion photon mixing, displays a continuous axion-photon duality symmetry in the limit the axion mass is…
Axions arising as modes of higher-dimensional gauge fields are known to offer a compelling solution to the axion quality problem and to naturally arise in string theory. In this context, it is interesting to ask how we would interpret an…
Axions with variable masses, in the context of a scalar--tensor gravity theory, give a large entropy production during the matter era. The subsequent axion dilution is proportional to their present energy density. Depending on the…
Any would-be Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is vulnerable to various types of explicit breaking. It has long been recognized that these can disrupt the axion solution to the strong CP problem. There have also been suggestions that, under…
The axion decay into charged fermion-antifermion pair $a ~\to f ~\tilde f$ is studied in external crossed and magnetic fields. The result we have obtained can be of use to re-examine the lower limit on the axion mass in case of possible…
We study the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the dynamics of axions. In particular, we show that the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is explicitly broken by the presence of an external magnetic field. This breaking is induced by the…
We investigate the axion inflation model derived by poly-instanton effects in type II superstring theories. Poly-instanton effects are instanton effects corrected by another instanton and it can generate the modulus-axion potential with the…
The axion Weak Gravity Conjecture implies that when parametrically increasing the axion decay constants, instanton corrections become increasingly important. We provide strong evidence for the validity of this conjecture by studying the…
If a global chiral symmetry is explicitly broken by anomalies in nonabelian gauge theories, a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson (axion) associated with a spontaneous breakdown of such a global symmetry acquires a mass through nonperturbative…
Standard axion electrodynamics has two closely related features. First, the coupling of a massless axion field to photons is quantized, in units proportional to the electric gauge coupling squared. Second, the equations of motion tell us…
A central object in any axionic theory is its periodic potential, which is typically generated by instantons. The goal of this paper is to understand what physically happens to the theory when we lose control of the potential's instanton…
We study topological symmetry breaking via the behaviour of Wilson and 't Hooft loop operators for the 2+1 dimenesional Abelian-Higgs model with Chern-Simons term. The topological linking of instantons, which are closed vortex loop…
We explore a novel IR phase of electromagnetism and place constraints on it. The usual IR modification of electromagnetism, the Higgs phase, involves adding a photon mass for the gauge field $A_\mu$, which screens electric fields and…
The axion photon system in an external magnetic field, when the direction of propagation of axions and photons is orthogonal to the direction of the external magnetic field, displays a continuous axion-photon duality symmetry in the limit…
In the presence of an anomalous CP phase in a U(1) gauge theory, a monopole becomes a dyon via the Witten effect. When the anomalous CP phase is promoted to a dynamical field, the axion, the electric charge of the dyon changes according to…