No Arabic abstract
We study the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry of sterile right-handed neutrino sector and the gauge symmetries of the Standard Model (SM). Due to four-fermion interactions, spontaneous breaking of these symmetries at the electroweak scale generates top-quark Dirac mass and sterile neutrino Majorana mass. The top quark channels yields massive Higgs, $W^pm$ and $Z^0$ bosons. The sterile neutrino channel yields the heaviest sterile neutrino Majorana mass, sterile Nambu-Goldstone axion (or majoron) and massive scalar $chi$boson ($m_chisim 10^2$ GeV). Their tiny couplings to SM particles are effectively induced by four-fermion operators. We show that such sterile axion is the PQ solution to the strong CP problem. The lightest sterile neutrino ($m_N^esim 10^2$ keV), sterile QCD axion ($m_a< 10^{-6}$ eV, $g_{agamma}< 10^{-13} {rm GeV}^{-1}$) and $chi$boson can be dark matter particle candidates, for their tiny couplings and long lifetimes inferred from the Xenon1T experiment. The axion and $chi$boson couplings to SM particles are below the values reached by current laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations for directly or indirectly detecting dark matter particles.
We consider extensions of the Standard Model in which a spontaneously broken global chiral Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry arises as an accidental symmetry of an exact $Z_N$ symmetry. For $N = 9$ or $10$, this symmetry can protect the accion - the Nambu-Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of the accidental PQ symmetry - against semi-classical gravity effects, thus suppressing gravitational corrections to the effective potential, while it can at the same time provide for the small explicit symmetry breaking term needed to make models with domain wall number $N_{rm DW}>1$, such as the popular Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) model ($N_{rm DW}=6$), cosmologically viable even in the case where spontaneous PQ symmetry breaking occurred after inflation. We find that $N=10$ DFSZ accions with mass $m_A approx 3.5$-$4.2,mathrm{meV}$ can account for cold dark matter and simultaneously explain the hints for anomalous cooling of white dwarfs. The proposed helioscope International Axion Observatory - being sensitive to solar DFSZ accions with mass above a few meV - will decisively test this scenario.
We show that, for values of the axion decay constant parametrically close to the GUT scale, the Peccei-Quinn phase transition may naturally occur during warm inflation. This results from interactions between the Peccei-Quinn scalar field and the ambient thermal bath, which is sustained by the inflaton field through dissipative effects. It is therefore possible for the axion field to appear as a dynamical degree of freedom only after observable CMB scales have become super-horizon, thus avoiding the large-scale axion isocurvature perturbations that typically plague such models. This nevertheless yields a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of axion isocurvature perturbations on small scales, with a density contrast of up to a few percent, which may have a significant impact on the formation of gravitationally-bound axion structures such as mini-clusters.
We propose a model where Dirac neutrino mass is obtained from small vacuum expectation value (VEV) of neutrino-specific Higgs doublet without fine-tuning problem. The small VEV results from a seesaw-like formula with the high energy scale identified as the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaking scale. Axion can be introduced {it `a la} KSVZ or DFSZ. The model suggests neutrino mass, solution to the strong CP problem, and dark matter may be mutually interconnected.
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.
We review sterile neutrinos as possible Dark Matter candidates. After a short summary on the role of neutrinos in cosmology and particle physics, we give a comprehensive overview of the current status of the research on sterile neutrino Dark Matter. First we discuss the motivation and limits obtained through astrophysical observations. Second, we review different mechanisms of how sterile neutrino Dark Matter could have been produced in the early universe. Finally, we outline a selection of future laboratory searches for keV-scale sterile neutrinos, highlighting their experimental challenges and discovery potential.