Journal of High Energy Physics (Oct 2022)

Axiogenesis with a heavy QCD axion

  • Raymond T. Co,
  • Tony Gherghetta,
  • Keisuke Harigaya

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2022)121
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2022, no. 10
pp. 1 – 32

Abstract

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Abstract We demonstrate that the observed cosmological excess of matter over anti-matter may originate from a heavy QCD axion that solves the strong CP problem but has a mass much larger than that given by the Standard Model QCD strong dynamics. We investigate a rotation of the heavy QCD axion in field space, which is transferred into a baryon asymmetry through weak and strong sphaleron processes. This provides a strong cosmological motivation for heavy QCD axions, which are of high experimental interest. The viable parameter space has an axion mass m a between 1 MeV and 10 GeV and a decay constant f a < 105 GeV, which can be probed by accelerator-based direct axion searches and observations of the cosmic microwave background.

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