Axion assisted Schwinger effect

Domcke, Valerie; Ema, Yohei; Mukaida, Kyohei

doi:10.1007/jhep05(2021)001

Cited by 28 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(99 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, y ψ cannot be taken vanishingly small. Most importantly, a sufficiently large fermion mass is required to suppress the production of fermions via the analog of the Schwinger effect [78]. We find the lower bound on y ψ coming from this consideration leads to an excessive freeze-in abundance of the fermions, and hence an excessive electric conductivity.…”

Section: Jhep12(2021)099mentioning

confidence: 93%

Gravitational waves and dark photon dark matter from axion rotations

Harigaya

Pierce

2021

J. High Energ. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An axion rotating in field space can produce dark photons in the early universe via tachyonic instability. This explosive particle production creates a background of stochastic gravitational waves that may be visible at pulsar timing arrays or other gravitational wave detectors. This scenario provides a novel history for dark photon dark matter. The dark photons may be warm at a level detectable in future 21-cm line surveys. For a consistent cosmology, the radial direction of the complex field containing the axion must be thermalized. We explore a concrete thermalization mechanism in detail and also demonstrate how this setup can be responsible for the generation of the observed baryon asymmetry.

show abstract

Section: Jhep12(2021)099mentioning

confidence: 93%

Gravitational waves and dark photon dark matter from axion rotations

Harigaya

Pierce

2021

J. High Energ. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this paper, motivated by theories of the early Universe containing axion fields with classical vacuum expectation values interacting with fermions [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], we revisit anomalous Ward identities due to axion or pseudoscalar interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Axion anomalies

Adshead¹,

Lozanov²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We study fermions derivatively coupled to axion-like or pseudoscalar fields, and show that the axial vector current of the fermions is not conserved in the limit where the fermion is massless. This violation of the classical chiral symmetry is due to the background axion field. We compute the contributions to this anomalous Ward identity due to the pseudoscalar field alone, which arise in Minkowski space, as well as the effects due to interaction with an external gravitational field. In all cases, these interactions induce terms in the axion effective action that can be removed by the addition of local counterterms. We perform our computations both perturbatively using Feynman graphs, as well as by studying the transformation properties of the path integral measure. Using the heat kernel method, we include the effects of gravity as well as gauge fields, and compute the anomaly. Finally, we verify our relation by considering derivatively coupled fermions during pseudoscalardriven inflation and computing the divergence of the axial current in de Sitter spacetime.

show abstract

“…We note that for the large values of ξ required in this mechanism, the axion-assisted Schwinger effect [84] could be important. This would exponentially enhance the gauge boson production in the broken phase for…”

Section: Constraints From the Dark Relaxion Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 91%

Cosmological Relaxation through the Dark Axion Portal

Domcke¹,

Schmitz²,

You³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The dark axion portal is a coupling of an axion-like particle to a dark photon kinetically mixed with the visible photon. We show how this portal, when applied to the relaxion, can lead to cosmological relaxation of the weak scale using dark photon production. The key backreaction mechanism involves the Schwinger effect: As long as electroweak symmetry is unbroken, Schwinger production of massless Standard Model fermions, which carry dark millicharges, suppresses the dark photon production. Once the electroweak symmetry is broken, the fermions acquire mass and the suppression is lifted. An enhanced dark photon dissipation then traps the relaxion at a naturally small weak scale. Our model thus provides a novel link between the phenomenological dark axion portal, dark photons, and the hierarchy problem of the Higgs mass.

show abstract

Axion assisted Schwinger effect

Cited by 28 publications

References 51 publications

Gravitational waves and dark photon dark matter from axion rotations

Gravitational waves and dark photon dark matter from axion rotations

Axion anomalies

Cosmological Relaxation through the Dark Axion Portal

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About