Related papers: Relaxing Axions
We analyse the cosmological evolution of a generalised axion-like field that drives the late-time acceleration of the Universe. This model can exhibit tracking behaviour, which alleviates the coincidence problem. The cosmological…
A model of high scale inflation is presented where the radial part of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) field with a non-minimal coupling to gravity plays the role of the inflaton, and the QCD axion is the dark matter. A quantum fluctuation of…
Several theoretical motivations point to ultralight QCD axions with large decay constants $f_a \simeq \mathcal{O}(10^{16}-10^{17})$ GeV, to which experimental proposals are dedicated. This regime is known to face the problem of…
Axions arising as modes of higher-dimensional gauge fields are known to offer a compelling solution to the axion quality problem and to naturally arise in string theory. In this context, it is interesting to ask how we would interpret an…
We discuss some cosmological aspects of supersymmetric axion models in which the axion scale is radiatively generated in terms of the weak scale and the Planck scale. They include thermal inflation, axions produced by the decay of…
We study cosmological effects of explicit Peccei-Quinn breaking on the QCD axion dark matter. We find that the axion abundance decreases or increases significantly depending on the initial position, even for a tiny Peccei-Quinn breaking…
We analyze in detail the background cosmological evolution of a scalar field coupled to a massless abelian gauge field through an axial term $\frac{\phi}{f_\gamma} F \tilde{F}$, such as in the case of an axion. Gauge fields in this case are…
We demonstrate that there exists a large class of action functionals of the scalar curvature and of the Gauss-Bonnet invariant which are able to relax dynamically a large cosmological constant (CC), whatever it be its starting value in the…
We study the problem of relaxing a large cosmological constant in the astrophysical domain through a dynamical mechanism based on a modified action of gravity previously considered by us at the cosmological level. We solve the model in the…
The cosmological vacuum decay scenario recently proposed by Wang and Meng \cite{wm} is rediscussed. From thermodynamic arguments it is found that the $\epsilon$ parameter quantifying the vacuum decay rate must be positive in the presence of…
The fluctuations of the vacuum energy are treated as a non-equilibrium process and a stochastic model for the cosmological constant is presented, which yields a natural explanation for the smallness or zero value of the constant in the…
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…
Observation indicates that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating and favours a dynamical cosmological constant, \Lambda(t). We consider the possibility that this is due to a scalar field which has undergone a very recent phase…
Cosmological scaling solutions, which give rise to a scalar-field density proportional to a background fluid density during radiation and matter eras, are attractive to alleviate the energy scale problem of dark energy. In the presence of…
We update cosmological bound on axion model. The contribution from the anharmonic effect and the newly introduced initial overshoot correction are considered. We present an explicit formula for the axion relic density in terms of the QCD…
A new model of oscillators was suggested, in which an oscillating particle in the minimum energy state has a nonzero velocity. A system consisting of a point material particle and a scalar field described by the nonlinear Klein-Gordon…
The cosmological constant problem is studied in a two component cosmological model. The universe contains a cosmological constant of an arbitrary size and sign and an additional component with an inhomogeneous equation of state. It is shown…
The axion is a light pseudoscalar particle postulated to solve issues with the Standard Model, including the strong CP problem and the origin of dark matter. In recent years, there has been remarkable progress in the physics of axions in…
A new idea of the cosmological constant is proposed in this paper. Due to the horizon is limited, the quantum fluctuation of the inflaton field is not zero, a nonzero vacuum energy is remained as a residual inflationary energy of an unusual…
In this Letter we discuss the issues of the graceful exit from inflation and of matter creation in the context of a recent scenario \cite{RHBrev} in which the back-reaction of long wavelength cosmological perturbations induces a negative…