An introduction to axions and their detection

Abstract

In these notes I try to introduce the reader to the topic of axions: their theoretical motivation and expected phenomenology, their role in astrophysics and as dark matter candidate, and the experimental techniques to detect them. Special emphasis is made in this last point, for which a relatively updated review of worldwide efforts and future prospects is made. The material is intended as an introduction to the topic, and it was prepared as lecture notes for Les Houches summer school 2021. Abundant references are included to direct the reader to deeper insight on the different aspects of axion physics.

A next-generation liquid xenon observatory for dark matter and neutrino physics

“…The QCD axion is a pseudoscalar Nambu-Goldstone boson originally proposed as a solution to the strong CP problem of QCD [574][575][576]. The QCD axion is also an excellent dark matter candidate [577][578][579][580][581]: as they acquire their mass via nonperturbative QCD effects, they are stable on cosmological timescales. Further, QCD axions offer a variety of well-motivated production mechanisms [582].…”

Dark Matter and Axion Searches

“…A number of computations have been published that attack this challenging task. For more details on this we would like to point out a nice, pedagogical review in which of these aspects and some results are summarized [17].…”

White Dwarfs as Physics Laboratories: Lights and Shadows

“…In previous works,Viaux et al, [2013a,b] obtained μ ] ≲ 4.5 × 10 −12 μ B using the red giants of the globular clusterM5. 11 Notice that the evolution of the period of DOVs would be perturbed but the importance of the radial contraction and the uncertainties of their structure prevent, for the moment, to use them as laboratories.12 SeeIrastorza (2021) for an extensive review about axions and their detection.Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences | www.frontiersin.org January 2022 | Volume 9 | Article 815517…”