Related papers: A mass for the dual axion
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…
We study the formation and the subsequent mass growth of axion stars inside axion miniclusters. Numerically solving the Schr\"odinger-Poisson equations with realistic initial conditions we find that the axion stars exhibit similar…
We introduce a novel class of bosonic dark matter candidates that we dub wallions, featuring boundaries in field space. The wallion mass is exponentially suppressed when the separation between boundaries far exceeds their intrinsic width…
Quantum mass acquisition, in which a massless (quasi)particle becomes massive due to quantum corrections, is predicted to occur in several subfields of physics. However, its experimental observation remains elusive since the emergent energy…
While axions seem ubiquitous in critical string theories, whether they might survive in any string theoretic description of nature is a difficult question. With some mild assumptions, one can frame the issues in the case that there is an…
The hierarchy of fermion masses in the standard model may arise via the breaking of discrete gauge symmetries. The renormalizable interactions of the flavor-symmetry-breaking potential can have accidental global symmetries that are…
There exists a widely spread notion that gravitational effects can strongly violate global symmetries. It may lead to many important consequences. We will argue, in particular, that nonperturbative gravitational effects in the axion theory…
We implement the scenario of early relaxation of the axion via a high scale confinement within $SU(5)$ grand unified theory and study an epoch of strong QCD in inflationary cosmology. We consider scenarios in which, during inflation, the…
We study the axion in three-dimensional topological insulators with magnetic impurities under finite temperature. We find a stable antiferromagnetic ground state and ferromagnetic metastable state. In both magnetic states, the mass of the…
We are discussing some aspects of the magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings interactions with axion domain walss and membranes. The monopole moving through an axion domain wall is transformed into a monopole bag - the state with a dyon…
We propose a relaxation mechanism for the initial misalignment angle of the pre-inflationary QCD axion with a large decay constant. The proposal addresses the challenges posed to the axion dark matter scenario by an overabundance of axions…
We consider the de Sitter cosmology deformed by the presence of a thermal bath of radiation and/or time-dependent moduli fields. Depending on the parameters, either a first or second order phase transition can occur. In the first case, an…
We study the phenomenon of mass loss by a scalar charge -- a point particle that acts a source for a noninteracting scalar field -- in an expanding universe. The charge is placed on comoving world lines of two cosmological spacetimes: a de…
In certain models of a QCD axion, finite density corrections to the axion potential can result in the axion being sourced by large dense objects. There are a variety of ways to test this phenomenon, but perhaps the most surprising effect is…
It is by now well understood that spin asymmetry in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) can appear if two things are both present: (i) a chirality flip of the struck quark; (ii) a nonzero T-odd phase due to its final state interaction. So far…
We investigate the role of gauge and gravitational instantons in the context of the Swampland program. Our focus is on the global symmetry breaking they induce, especially in the presence of fermions. We first recall and make more precise…
Axion models generically suffer from a severe quality problem when coupled to gravity. In this article we provide a very simple model with a high quality axion. The axion is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of the baryon number symmetry,…
It has been recently shown that the requirement of anomaly cancellation in a (non-supersymmetric) six-dimensional version of the standard model fixes the field content to the known three generations. We discuss the phenomenological…
A general scheme for axion electrodynamics is given, in which a surrounding medium of constant permittivity and permeability is assumed. Then, as an application we give simple numerical estimates for the electromagnetic current density…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…