Related papers: Axiverse Lampposts
Measurements of 21cm intensity mapping (IM) during the dark ages can potentially provide us with an unprecedented window on high redshifts and small scales. One of the main advantages this can bring involves the possibility to probe the…
The interaction between the dark/mirror sector and the ordinary sector is considered, where the two sectors interact with each other by sharing the same QCD axion field. This feature makes the mixing between ordinary and dark/mirror photons…
The QCD axion is one of the best motivated dark matter candidates. The misalignment mechanism is well known to produce an abundance of the QCD axion consistent with dark matter for an axion decay constant of order $10^{12}$ GeV. For a…
We study the cosmology of axion-scalar pairs, coupled by a hyperbolic field-space metric and with a string-motivated rational scalar potential. Borrowing tools from the theory of dynamical systems, we are able to classify all late-time…
A system of light axions comprising a classical axion field, one candidate for dark matter, has an instability that can rapidly mix in photon pairs in a coherent fashion if initiated by a quantum break (which eliminates the need for seeds.)…
We motivate a relation between dark energy and the scale of new physics in weakly coupled string theory. This mixing between infrared and ultraviolet physics leads to a unique corner for real-world phenomenology: barring fine-tunings, we…
Two of the most pressing questions in physics are the microscopic nature of the dark matter that comprises 84% of the mass in the universe and the absence of a neutron electric dipole moment. These questions would be resolved by the…
A brief discussion is presented assessing the achievements and challenges of string phenomenology: the subfield dedicated to study the potential for string theory to make contact with particle physics and cosmology. Building from the well…
Axion dark matter (DM) constitutes an oscillating background that violates parity and time-reversal symmtries. Inside piezoelectric crystals, where parity is broken spontaneously, this axion background can result in a stress. We call this…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…
Axions are some of the best motivated particles beyond the Standard Model. We show how the attractive self-interactions of dark matter (DM) axions over a broad range of masses, from $10^{-22}$ eV to $10^7$ GeV, can lead to nongravitational…
ALP-photon couplings are modeled in large ensembles of string vacua and random matrix theories. In all cases, the effective coupling increases polynomially in the number of ALPs, of which hundreds or thousands are expected in the string…
We show that the couplings of axions to gauge bosons are highly restricted in Grand Unified Theories where the standard model is embedded in a simple 4D gauge group. The topological nature of these couplings allows them to be matched from…
Ultralight axion-like particles can contribute to the dark matter near the Sun, leading to a distinct, stochastic signature in terrestrial experiments. We search for such particles through their neutron-spin coupling by re-analyzing…
Dark matter axions can generate peculiar effects in special types of Josephson junctions, so-called SNS junctions. One can show that the axion field equations in a Josephson environment allow for very small oscillating supercurrents, which…
We present some bottom-up motivations of axions and other weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) coupling to photons. Typically, these light particles are strongly constrained by their production or interaction in astrophysical and…
Recent BICEP2 detection of low-multipole B-mode polarization anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation supports the inflationary universe scenario and suggests a large inflaton field range. The latter feature can be achieved…
The characteristic axion couplings could be generated via effective couplings between the Standard Model (SM) fermions to a pseudo-Goldstone from a high-scale $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaking. Assuming that the UV-induced…
We study the potential of a future, large-volume photometric survey to constrain the axion mass $m_a$ in the hot dark matter limit. Future surveys such as Euclid will have significantly more constraining power than current observations for…
The electric Weak Gravity Conjecture demands that axions with large decay constant $f$ couple to light instantons. The resulting large instantonic corrections pose problems for natural inflation. We explore an alternative argument based on…