Related papers: Axion Relic Pockets -- a theory of dark matter
The axion arises in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as an alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm to explain the nature of dark matter. In this contribution, we…
Dark matter axions form a rethermalizing Bose-Einstein condensate. This provides an opportunity to distinguish axions from other forms of dark matter on observational grounds. I show that if the dark matter is axions, tidal torque theory…
We consider the production of axion dark matter through the misalignment mechanism in the context of a nonstandard cosmological history involving early matter domination by a scalar field with a time-dependent decay rate. In cases where the…
We study the impact of sphaleron-induced thermal friction on the axion dark-matter abundance due to the interaction of an axion-like particle (ALP) with a dark non-abelian gauge sector in a secluded thermal bath. Thermal friction can either…
In this master's thesis we study the production of axion dark matter through the so-called misalignment mechanism by considering that during that time, the universe was dominated by a new kind of fluid, different than radiation. We perform…
Despite growing interest and extensive effort to search for ultralight dark matter in the form of a hypothetical dark photon, how it fits into a consistent cosmology is unclear. Several dark photon dark matter production mechanisms proposed…
The axion is a light pseudoscalar particle postulated to solve issues with the Standard Model, including the strong CP problem and the origin of dark matter. In recent years, there has been remarkable progress in the physics of axions in…
Axions as dark matter is an increasingly important subject in astrophysics and cosmology. Experimental and observational searches are mounting across the mass spectrum of axion-like particles, many of which require detailed knowledge of…
The axion has emerged in recent years as a leading particle candidate to provide the mysterious dark matter in the cosmos, as we review here for a general scientific audience. We describe first the historical roots of the axion in the…
Existing searches for cosmic axions relics have relied heavily on the axion being non-relativistic and making up dark matter. However, light axions can be copiously produced in the early Universe and remain relativistic today, thereby…
A favored scenario for axions to be dark matter is for them to form a cosmic string network that subsequently decays, allowing for a tight link between the axion mass and relic abundance. We discuss an example in which the axion is…
Axions are produced during a period of dilaton-driven inflation by amplification of quantum fluctuations. We show that for some range of string cosmology parameters and some range of axion masses, primordial axions may constitute a large…
If there are a plethora of axions in nature, they may have a complicated potential and create an axion landscape. We study a possibility that one of the axions is so light that it is cosmologically stable, explaining the observed dark…
The axion is arguably one of the best motivated candidates for dark matter. For a decay constant greater than about 10^9 GeV, axions are dominantly produced non-thermally in the early universe and hence are "cold", their velocity dispersion…
The QCD axion is a well-motivated hypothetical particle beyond the Standard Model (SM) and a compelling dark matter candidate. Its relic abundance is highly sensitive to the thermal history of the universe when the temperature is around the…
We study an axion-like particle (ALP) that experiences the first-order phase transition with respect to its mass or potential minimum. This can be realized if the ALP obtains a potential from non-perturbative effects of SU($N$) gauge theory…
We present a new mechanism for producing the correct relic abundance of dark photon dark matter over a wide range of its mass, extending down to $10^{-20}\,\mathrm{eV}$. The dark matter abundance is initially stored in an axion which is…
Recently, two of the present authors showed that even when the axion momentum is much smaller than its mass, the axion can still behave like radiation if its energy density greatly exceeds the maximum potential energy set by the cosine-type…
We show that axion phenomenology may be significantly different than conventionally assumed in theories which exhibit late phase transitions (below the QCD scale). In such theories one can find multiple pseudoscalars with axion-like…
The origin of dark matter as a thermal relic offers a compelling way in which the early universe was initially populated by dark matter. Alternative explanations typically appear exotic compared to the simplicity of thermal production.…