Related papers: Cosmic Axions
Axion dark matter in high-scale inflation is subject to the isocurvature constraint, since quantum fluctuations of the axion field during inflation may exceed the current CMB bound. One conventional way to suppress these fluctuations is to…
The recent detection of B-modes by BICEP2 has non-trivial implications for axion dark matter implied by combining the tensor interpretation with isocurvature constraints from Planck. In this paper the measurement is taken as fact, and its…
The quest to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy motivates a deep exploration into axion physics, particularly within the framework of string theory. Axions, originally proposed to solve the strong CP problem, emerge as…
It is difficult to construct a post-inflation QCD axion model that solves the axion quality problem (and hence the Strong CP problem) without introducing a cosmological disaster. In a post-inflation axion model, the axion field value is…
Axions and axion-like particles are compelling candidates for the missing dark matter of the universe. As they undergo gravitational collapse, they can form compact objects such as axion stars or even black holes. In this paper, we study…
I review a (3+1)-dimensional, string-inspired cosmological model with gravitational anomalies (of Chern-Simons (CS) type) at early epochs, and a totally-antisymmetric torsion, dual to a massless axion-like field ("gravitational axion"),…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
We study the stochastic axion dark matter scenario in the axion landscape, where one of the axions is light and stable and therefore explains dark matter. If the axion mass at the potential is a typical value of the curvature along the…
Observable primordial tensor modes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would point to a high scale of inflation $H_{I}$. If the scale of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) breaking $f_a$ is greater than $\frac{H_{I}}{2\pi}$, CMB constraints on…
In the scenario in which QCD axion dark matter is produced after inflation, the Universe is populated by large inhomogeneities on very small scales. Eventually, these fluctuations will collapse gravitationally to form dense axion…
It is quite possible that the reheat temperature of the universe is extremely low close to the scale of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, i.e. $T_{R}\sim 1-10$ MeV. At such low reheat temperatures generating matter anti-matter asymmetry and…
We constrain the coupling of thermally-produced axion-like particles (here axions) with photons and gluons, using data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectra and baryon acoustic oscillations. The axion possesses an explicit soft…
The post-inflationary Peccei-Quinn symmetry-breaking scenario provides a rich theoretical framework to study axion dark matter production through the dynamics oftopological defects. Accurate predictions for the axion abundance require a…
If dark matter is composed of axions, then axion stars form in the cores of dark matter halos. These stars are unstable above a critical mass, decaying to radio photons that heat the intergalactic medium, offering a new channel for axion…
We apply the squeezed state formalism to scalar field dark matter (e.g. axion) perturbations generated during inflation. As for the inflationary perturbations, the scalar field state becomes highly squeezed as modes exit the horizon. For as…
Cosmic strings formed when the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaks post-inflation are expected to emit axions throughout their lifetime. The details of the evolution of this network and the associated spectrum of axions are crucial for obtaining…
We show that in large-field inflationary scenarios, superheavy (many orders of magnitude larger than the weak scale) dark matter will be produced in cosmologically interesting quantities if superheavy stable particles exist in the mass…
The growth of adiabatic density perturbations during an era of early matter domination induces $\mathcal{O}(1)$ fluctuations in pre-inflationary QCD axion dark matter across a broad, string-theory-motivated parameter space. Remarkably, at…
We use observations of the cosmological large-scale structure to derive limits on two-component hot dark matter consisting of mass-degenerate neutrinos and hadronic axions, both components having velocity dispersions corresponding to their…
The naturalness problem of PQ symmetry motivates study of the heavy QCD axion, with masses $m_a >$ 1 MeV generated at scales above the QCD scale, and low values of the PQ symmetry breaking scale, $f_a$. We compute the abundance of such…