Axions in Cold Dark Matter and Inflation Models
arXiv:1111.5281
Abstract
The subjects of this thesis are the invisible axion and the more general family of axion-like particles. The invisible axion is a hypothetical elementary particle and a cold dark matter candidate. I present an improved computation of the constraints on the parameter space of the cold dark matter axion in the standard cosmology, that includes the contributions from anharmonicities in the axion potential and from the decay of axionic strings. In this scenario, I update the value of the mass of the cold dark matter axion, finding the value , approximately one order of magnitude larger than previous computations. The effect of nonstandard cosmological scenarios on the parameter space of axion cold dark matter is studied for the first time. In particular, I consider the cases of low-temperature reheating and kination cosmologies, and I show that the mass of the cold dark matter axion can differ from the value in the standard cosmological scenario by orders of magnitude. Finally, I consider the family of axion-like particles, assuming that these particles serve as the inflaton in the context of warm inflation. I find that the axion energy scale , which in the standard inflation scenario is of the order of the Planck mass, can be lowered to the much safer Grand Unification Theory scale . I also constrain the parameter space and the amount of gravitational waves from this model, using results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7-year data.
Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Utah, 2011. 149 pages, 7 chapters
References in corpus (23)
- Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
- Cosmology and the Fate of Dilatation Symmetry
- An Improved Experimental Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron
- The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory
- Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions
- A Natural Framework for Chaotic Inflation
- Neutralino with the Right Cold Dark Matter Abundance in (Almost) Any Supersymmetric Model
- Probing eV-scale axions with CAST
- A High Resolution Search for Dark-Matter Axions
- The effect of a late decaying scalar on the neutralino relic density
- Update of axion CDM energy density
- Isocurvature bounds on axions revisited
- Axion constraints in non-standard thermal histories
- Abundance of Cosmological Relics in Low-Temperature Scenarios
- Inflationary Cosmology Connecting Dark Energy and Dark Matter
- Warm natural inflation
- Constraining the photon-axion coupling constant with magnetic white dwarfs
- Windows over a New Low Energy Axion
- Natural Inflation: the status after WMAP 3-year data
- Connecting LHC, ILC, and Quintessence
- Quintessential Kination and Thermal Production of Gravitinos and Axinos
- Natural inflation at the GUT scale
- Quintessential Kination and Leptogenesis