No Arabic abstract
Axion is a promising candidate of dark matter. After the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking, axion strings are formed and attached by domain walls when the temperature of the universe becomes comparable to the QCD scale. Such objects can cause cosmological disasters if they are long-lived. As a solution for it, the Lazarides-Shafi mechanism is often discussed through introduction of a new non-Abelian (gauge) symmetry. We study this mechanism in detail and show configuration of strings and walls. Even if Abelian axion strings with a domain wall number greater than one are formed in the early universe, each of them is split into multiple Alice axion strings due to a repulsive force between the Alice strings even without domain wall. When domain walls are formed as the universe cools down, a single Alice string can be attached by a single wall because a vacuum is connected by a non-Abelian rotation without changing energy. Even if an Abelian axion string attached by domain walls are created due to the Kibble Zurek mechanism at the chiral phase transition, such strings are also similarly split into multiple Alice strings attached by walls in the presence of the domain wall tension. Such walls do not form stable networks since they collapse by the tension of the walls, emitting axions.
The domain wall problem and the isocurvature problem restrict possible combinations of axion models and inflation models. In this paper, we considered a new mechanism which solves those problems by dynamics of multiple scalar fields during/after inflation. The mechanism makes axion models with a non-trivial domain wall number compatible with inflation models with a large Hubble parameter, $H_{I} gg 10^{7mbox{-}8},$GeV. The mechanism also avoids the isocurvature problem. This mechanism increases the freedom of choice of combinations of axion models and inflation models.
In our previous work, we found new types of the cosmic string solutions in the Abelian-Higgs model with an enhanced $U(1)$ global symmetry. We dubbed those solutions as the compensated/uncompensated strings. The compensated string is similar to the conventional cosmic string in the Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen (ANO) string, around which only the would-be Nambu-Goldstone (NG) boson winds. Around the uncompensated string, on the other hand, the physical NG boson also winds, where the physical NG boson is associated with the spontaneous breaking of the enhanced symmetry. Our previous simulation in the 2+1 dimensional spacetime confirmed that both the compensated/uncompensated strings are formed at the phase transition of the symmetry breaking. Non-trivial winding of the physical NG boson around the strings potentially causes the so-called axion domain-wall problem when the model is applied to the axion model. In this paper, we perform simulation in the 3+1 dimensional spacetime to discuss the fate of the uncompensated strings. We observe that the evolution of the string-network is highly complicated in the 3+1 dimensional simulation compared with that seen in the previous simulation. Despite such complications, we find that the number of the uncompensated strings which could cause can be highly suppressed at late times. Our observation suggests that the present setup can be applied to the axion model without suffering from the axion domain-wall problem.
The Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) with spontaneously broken $Z_2$ symmetry predicts a production of domain walls at the electroweak scale. We derive cosmological constraints on model parameters for both Type-I and Type-II 2HDMs from the requirement that domain walls do not dominate the Universe by the present day. For Type-I 2HDMs, we deduce the lower bound on the key parameter $tanbeta > 10^5$ for a wide range of Higgs-boson masses $sim$ 100 GeV or greater close to the Standard Model alignment limit. In addition, we perform numerical simulations of the 2HDM with an approximate as well as an exact $Z_2$ symmetry but biased initial conditions. In both cases, we find that domain wall networks are unstable and, hence, do not survive at late times. The domain walls experience an exponential suppression of scaling in these models which can help ameliorate the stringent constraints found in the case of an exact discrete symmetry. For a 2HDM with softly-broken $Z_2$ symmetry, we relate the size of this exponential suppression to the soft-breaking bilinear parameter $m_{12}$ allowing limits to be placed on this parameter of order $mu$eV, such that domain wall domination can be avoided. In particular, for Type-II 2HDMs, we obtain a corresponding lower limit on the CP-odd phase $theta$ generated by QCD instantons, $theta stackrel{>}{{}_sim} 10^{-11}/(sinbeta cosbeta)$, which is in some tension with the upper limit of $theta stackrel{<}{{}_sim} 10^{-11}$--$10^{-10}$, as derived from the non-observation of a non-zero neutron electric dipole moment. For a $Z_2$-symmetric 2HDM with biased initial conditions, we are able to relate the size of the exponential suppression to a biasing parameter $varepsilon$ so as to avoid domain wall domination.
Extending the Standard Model with three right-handed neutrinos and a simple QCD axion sector can account for neutrino oscillations, dark matter and baryon asymmetry; at the same time, it solves the strong CP problem, stabilizes the electroweak vacuum and can implement critical Higgs inflation (satisfying all current observational bounds). We perform here a general analysis of dark matter (DM) in such a model, which we call the $a u$MSM. Although critical Higgs inflation features a (quasi) inflection point of the inflaton potential we show that DM cannot receive a contribution from primordial black holes in the $a u$MSM. This leads to a multicomponent axion-sterile-neutrino DM and allows us to relate the axion parameters, such as the axion decay constant, to the neutrino parameters. We include several DM production mechanisms: the axion production via misalignment and decay of topological defects as well as the sterile-neutrino production through the resonant and non-resonant mechanisms and in the recently proposed CPT-symmetric universe.
The axion mass receives a large correction from small instantons if the QCD gets strongly coupled at high energies. We discuss the size of the new CP violating phases caused by the fact that the small instantons are sensitive to the UV physics. We also discuss the effects of the mass correction on the axion abundance of the Universe. Taking the small-instanton contributions into account, we propose a natural scenario of axion dark matter where the axion decay constant is as large as $10^{15text{-}16}$GeV. The scenario works in the high-scale inflation models.