Related papers: Current Status of Axion Cosmology
After 25 years of its existence, inflationary theory gradually becomes the standard cosmological paradigm. However, we still do not know which of the many versions of inflationary cosmology will be favored by the future observational data.…
Within an effective field theory derived from string theory, the universal axion has to be coupled to the the gravitational Chern-Simons (gCS) term. During any era when the axion field is varying, the vacuum fluctuation of the gravitational…
Axion production from astrophysical bodies is a topic in continuous development, because of theoretical progress in the estimate of stellar emission rates and, especially, because of improved stellar observations. We carry out a…
We study the impact of QCD axion strings in the cosmological history of electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking, focussing on the minimal KSVZ axion model. We consider the case of the pure SM Higgs potential as well as a simple scenario with a…
I report recent studies on the evolution of perturbations in the context of the ``pre-big-bang" scenario typical of string cosmology, with emphasis on the formation of a stochastic background of relic photons and gravitons, and its possible…
We discuss the possible sources of dark matter axions in the early universe. In the standard thermal scenario, an axion string network forms at the Peccei-Quinn phase transition $T\sim \fa$ and then radiatively decays into a cosmological…
In this talk, I review briefly a scenario for the evolution of a string-inspired cosmological model, in which condensates of primordial gravitational waves (GW), formed at the very early eras after the Big Bang, are considered responsible…
We show that quantum systems of extended objects naturally give rise to a large class of exotic phases - namely topological phases. These phases occur when the extended objects, called ``string-nets'', become highly fluctuating and…
In this work, the current stability is discussed for cosmic strings with the bosonic superconductivity. A non-vanishing curvature of string generally induce the quantum instability of the current-carrying particle. Its decay rates are…
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are some of the most popular candidates for dark matter, with several viable production scenarios that make different predictions. In the scenario in which the axion is born after inflation, its field…
In these lectures, I review the current status of cosmic strings and cosmic superstrings. I first discuss topological defects in the context of Grand Unified Theories, focusing in particular in cosmic strings arising as gauge theory…
We investigate the possibility that the Peccei-Quinn phase transition occurs at a temperature far below the symmetry breaking scale. Low phase transition temperatures are typical in supersymmetric theories, where symmetry breaking fields…
Large field excursions are required in a number of axion models of inflation. These models also possess global cosmic strings, around which the axion follows a path mirroring the inflationary trajectory. Cosmic strings are thus an…
Motivated by recent developments in superstring theory in the cosmological context, we examine a field theory which contains string networks with 3-way junctions. We perform numerical simulations of this model, identify the length scales of…
We study axion dark matter production from a misalignment mechanism in scenarios featuring a general nonstandard cosmology. Before the onset of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the energy density of the universe is dominated by a particle field…
We introduce a novel level crossing phenomenon in the mass mixing between the QCD axions, one canonical QCD axion and one $Z_{\mathcal N}$ axion. The level crossing can take place at or slightly before the QCD phase transition critical…
The QCD axion is one of the most appealing candidates for the dark matter in the Universe. In this article, we discuss the possibility to predict the axion mass in the context of a simple renormalizable grand unified theory where the…
First I will review the QCD theta problem and the Peccei-Quinn solution, with its new particle, the axion. I will review the possibility of the axion as dark matter. If PQ symmetry was restored at some point in the hot early Universe, it…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
String theory generically predicts the coupling between the Affleck-Dine field and axion field through higher-dimensional operators. We thus explore the Affleck-Dine baryogenesis on an axion background. It turns out that the axion…