Related papers: Relaxing Axions
The Strong CP Problem and its resolution through the existence of an axion are briefly reviewed. The combined constraints from accelerator searches, the evolution of red giants and the duration of the SN 1987a neutrino pulse require the…
Back-reaction of the massless scalar field vacuum to the Universe expansion is considered. Automatic renormalization procedure based on the equations of motion instead of the Friedman equation is used to avoid the cosmological constant…
The cascade relaxation of a polarized vacuum in the expanding Universe is a chain of evolutionary epochs of decreasing its density with the exit of dominant fields (each in its own time) from the initial zero states to nonzero values, from…
The vacuum fluctuations of all quantum fields filling the universe are supposed to leave enormous energy and pressure contributions which are incompatible with observations. It has been recently suggested that, when the effective nature of…
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…
This paper consider an universe dominated by baryonic matter, radiation and a nonminimally coupled massive scalar field under the action of a symmetry breaking potential. Inflation occurs naturally with appropriated slow-roll values. The…
We discuss a class of flat FRW cosmological models based on D=4 axion-dilaton gravity universally coupled to cosmological background fluids. In particular, we investigate the possibility of recurrent acceleration, which was recently shown…
A simple yet compelling physical picture is proposed for the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang. The proposal leads to predictions, from first-principles with high precision, for the values of the Hubble constant,…
We study the decay of a homogeneous condensate of a massive scalar field of mass \emph{m} into massless fields in thermal equilibrium in a radiation dominated cosmology. The model is a \emph{proxy} for the non-equilibrium dynamics of a…
We propose a model of dynamical relaxation of the cosmological constant. Technical naturalness of the model and the present value of the vacuum energy density imply an upper bound on the supersymmetry breaking scale and the reheating…
We discuss the decay of axion walls bounded by strings and present numerical simulations of the decay process. In these simulations, the decay happens immediately, in a time scale of order the light travel time, and the average energy of…
We study a dark energy model composed of a bare negative cosmological constant and a single ultra-light axion, motivated by the string axiverse. Assuming that intelligent observers arise and observe, as in our universe, the onset of…
Assuming the existence of a scalar field which undergoes "ghost condensation" and which has a suitably chosen potential, it is possible to obtain a non-singular bouncing cosmology in the presence of regular matter and radiation. The…
We study the axion in a warped heterotic background. It is shown that the axion decay constant, f_a, is sensitive to the warped mass scale of the throat. As an explicit model, we construct a novel AdS-like geometry in heterotic string…
We present cosmological bounds on the thermal axion mass in an extended cosmological scenario in which the primordial power spectrum of scalar perturbations differs from the usual power-law shape predicted by the simplest inflationary…
We highlight a new connection between the Standard Model hierarchy problem and the dark matter sector. The key piece is the relaxion field, which besides scanning the Higgs mass and setting the electroweak scale, also constitutes the…
It is unknown whether a bound on axion field ranges exists within quantum gravity. We study axion field ranges using extended supersymmetry, in particular allowing an analysis within strongly coupled regions of moduli space. We apply this…
The early universe grants access to energy scales far beyond those achievable in terrestrial experiments and allows unstable Standard Model particles to play an active dynamical role. In this contribution, we focus on recent studies aimed…
The axion electromagnetic anomaly induces an oscillating electric dipole for {\em any} static magnetic dipole. Static electric dipoles do not produce oscillating magnetic moments. This is a low energy theorem which is a consequence of the…
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…