Axion cold dark matter revisited

Abstract

We study for what specific values of the theoretical parameters the axion can form the totality of cold dark matter. We examine the allowed axion parameter region in the light of recent data collected by the WMAP5 mission plus baryon acoustic oscillations and supernovae \cite{komatsu}, and assume an inflationary scenario and standard cosmology. We also upgrade the treatment of anharmonicities in the axion potential, which we find important in certain cases. If the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is restored after inflation, we recover the usual relation between axion mass and density, so that an axion mass $m_a=(85\pm 3)\mu \mathrm{eV}$ makes the axion 100% of the cold dark matter. If the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken during inflation, the axion can instead be 100% of the cold dark matter for $m_a<15\mathrm{meV}$ provided a specific value of the initial misalignment angle ${\theta }_i$ is chosen in correspondence to a given value of its mass $m_a$. Large values of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scale correspond to small, perhaps uncomfortably small, values of the initial misalignment angle ${\theta }_i$.

3 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at TAUP 2009 conference, Rome, Italy, July 1-5 2009

References in corpus (3)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Axion Cosmology and the Energy Scale of Inflation
• Isocurvature bounds on axions revisited

Cited by in corpus (4)

• GRB 221009A: A light dark matter burst or an extremely bright Inverse Compton component?
• Axion Electrodynamics from Infeld-van der Waerden formalisms
• Axion-fermion Coupling and Dyon Charge as Physical Signatures of a Space-time Inner Symmetry
• Identifying metric spinor phase with axion field from axion-fermion coupling and Weyl-Peccei Quinn spin transformations