Wormholes and masses for Goldstone bosons

Abstract

There exist non-trivial stationary points of the Euclidean action for an axion particle minimally coupled to Einstein gravity, dubbed wormholes. They explicitly break the continuos global shift symmetry of the axion in a non-perturbative way, and generate an effective potential that may compete with QCD depending on the value of the axion decay constant. In this paper, we explore both theoretical and phenomenological aspects of this issue. On the theory side, we address the problem of stability of the wormhole solutions, and we show that the spectrum of the quadratic action features only positive eigenvalues. On the phenomenological side, we discuss, beside the obvious application to the QCD axion, relevant consequences for models with ultralight dark matter, black hole superradiance, and the relaxation of the electroweak scale. We conclude discussing wormhole solutions for a generic coset and the potential they generate.

arXiv comment50 pages, 15 figures. v2: minor changes, refs added

References in corpus (44)

• Cold and Fuzzy Dark Matter
• Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
• Too big to fail? The puzzling darkness of massive Milky Way subhaloes
• The String Landscape, Black Holes and Gravity as the Weakest Force
• Cold collapse and the core catastrophe
• Cosmic Structure as the Quantum Interference of a Coherent Dark Wave
• The Milky Way's bright satellites as an apparent failure of LCDM
• The QCD axion, precisely
• Exploring the String Axiverse with Precision Black Hole Physics
• Cosmological Relaxation of the Electroweak Scale
• Discovering the QCD Axion with Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
• Can dark matter be a Bose-Einstein condensate?
• GRAVITY AND GLOBAL SYMMETRIES
• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions
• Gravitational wave searches for ultralight bosons with LIGO and LISA
• Axion dark matter from topological defects
• A Clockwork Axion
• Black Hole Mergers and the QCD Axion at Advanced LIGO
• Stochastic and resolvable gravitational waves from ultralight bosons
• Supersymmetric String Solitons
• Transplanckian axions !?
• Bose-Einstein condensation of dark matter solves the core/cusp problem
• Planckian Axions and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• The Quest for an Intermediate-Scale Accidental Axion and Further ALPs
• Axion cold dark matter in non-standard cosmologies
• Small neutrino masses from gravitational $\theta$-term
• Axion cold dark matter in view of BICEP2 results
• Canonical Quantization of Cosmological Perturbations in the One Bubble Open Universe
• Naturally light invisible axion in models with large local discrete symmetries
• Cosmological dynamics of dark matter Bose-Einstein Condensation
• Is the Relaxion an Axion?
• An ultralight pseudoscalar boson
• The Peccei-Quinn Symmetry from a Gauged Discrete R Symmetry
• A "Gauged" $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn Symmetry
• Accidental Peccei-Quinn symmetry protected to arbitrary order
• Stabilizing the Axion by Discrete Gauge Symmetries
• Light axion-like dark matter must be present during inflation
• Homogeneous Modes of Cosmological Instantons
• Cosmological Perturbations from the No Boundary Euclidean Path Integral
• A Negative Mode About Euclidean Wormhole
• On How Neutrino Protects the Axion
• Gravity Waves from Instantons
• Semiclassical Gravity and Invisible Axions
• Cosmological production of ultralight dark matter axions

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Euclidean wormholes, baby universes, and their impact on particle physics and cosmology
• Flat Monodromies and a Moduli Space Size Conjecture
• Automatic Peccei-Quinn symmetry
• Black hole superradiance and polarization-dependent bending of light
• A Composite Axion from a Supersymmetric Product Group
• Axion mass and quantum information