Related papers: REMOVING THE COSMOLOGICAL BOUND ON THE AXION SCALE
Recently we have proposed a simple hadronic axion model within gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. In this paper we discuss various cosmological consequences of the model in great detail. A particular attention is paid to a saxion, a…
We study the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is a consistency condition for a theory of quantum gravity asserting that for a U(1) gauge field, there is a particle charged under this…
Consistent frameworks of quantum gravity often predict the existence of large numbers of ultralight pseudoscalar degrees of freedom, forming the phenomenological landscape of the String Axiverse. The complexity of the extra-dimensional…
We show that the required high quality of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry can be naturally explained in the aligned QCD axion models where the QCD axion arises from multiple axions with decay constants much smaller than the axion window, e.g.,…
We review current cosmological constraints on the axion. We describe the basic mechanisms by which axions are created in the early universe, focussing on the standard thermal scenario where the dominant process is through axion radiation by…
We consider a string inspired non-supersymmetric extension of the standard model with gauged anomalous U(1) flavor symmetries. Consistency requires the Green-Schwarz mechanism to cancel mixed anomalies. The additional required scalars…
We study the stability of supersymmetry breaking vacuum in the presence of cosmic strings arising in the messenger sector. For certain ranges of the couplings, the desired supersymmetry breaking vacua become unstable against decay into…
Axion-like fields are naturally generated by a mechanism of anomaly cancellation of one or more anomalous gauge abelian symmetries at the Planck scale, emerging as duals of a two-form from the massless bosonic sector of string theory. This…
It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the…
In axion quintessence, the cosmological era with an energy contrast in dark energy 0.1 < Omega_DE < 0.9 may represent a significant fraction of the universe's lifetime if the minimum of the axion potential is negative (unstable axion…
The QCD axion stands as one of the most promising candidates for resolving the strong CP problem. However, the value of the axion's decay constant $f_a$ and, by extension, its mass $m_a$, remain uncertain within the framework of effective…
We describe one of the remarkable problems of theoretical physics persevering up to the beginning of the millennium. All gaugetheories with spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking from the standard model of particle physics with the electroweak…
Complex scalar fields charged under approximate $U(1)$ symmetries appear in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. One example is the field that contains the QCD axion field associated with the Peccei-Quinn symmetry; others…
The typical scalar field theory has a cosmological constant problem. We propose a generic mechanism by which this problem is avoided at tree level by embedding the theory into a larger theory. The metric and the scalar field coupling…
It has been claimed in a series of papers that scalar fields with a fourth-order Lagrangian $\sim(\Box\varphi)^2$ can solve the cosmological constant problem by canceling the loop contributions from standard model fields, and that their…
If axions exist they are efficiently produced in the hot and dense interior of stars, providing a novel energy-loss mechanism. In order to avoid a conflict with the observed properties of stars, one can derive a lower limit on the…
We present a theory with axion flux monodromies coupled to gravity, that reduces to the local vacuum energy sequester below the axion mass scales. If the axion potentials include a term generated by nonperturbative couplings to gauge…
Under the hypothesis that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
The decay constant of the QCD axion is required by observation to be small compared to the Planck scale. In theories of "natural inflation," and certain proposed anthropic solutions of the cosmological constant problem, it would be…
In no--scale supergravity global symmetries protect local supersymmetry and a zero value for the cosmological constant. We consider the breakdown of these symmetries and present a minimal SUGRA model motivated by the multiple point…