Gravitational Wave and CMB Probes of Axion Kination

Abstract

Rotations of an axion field in field space provide a natural origin for an era of kination domination, where the energy density is dominated by the kinetic term of the axion field, preceded by an early era of matter domination. Remarkably, no entropy is produced at the end of matter domination and hence these eras of matter and kination domination may occur even after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We derive constraints on these eras from both the cosmic microwave background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We investigate how this cosmological scenario affects the spectrum of possible primordial gravitational waves and find that the spectrum features a triangular peak. We discuss how future observations of gravitational waves can probe the viable parameter space, including regions that produce axion dark matter by the kinetic misalignment mechanism or the baryon asymmetry by axiogenesis. For QCD axion dark matter produced by the kinetic misalignment mechanism, a modification to the inflationary gravitational wave spectrum occurs above 0.01 Hz and, for high values of the energy scale of inflation, the prospects for discovery are good. We briefly comment on implications for structure formation of the universe.

63 pages, 17 figures; v2: references and discussions added; v3: matches journal version; v4: journal references updated

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• Gravity as a Portal to Reheating, Leptogenesis and Dark Matter
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• Precision cosmology and the stiff-amplified gravitational-wave background from inflation: NANOGrav, Advanced LIGO-Virgo and the Hubble tension
• Ultrahigh frequency primordial gravitational waves beyond the kHz: The case of cosmic strings
• Signatures of Non-thermal Dark Matter with Kination and Early Matter Domination: Gravitational Waves versus Laboratory Searches
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• QCD Axion Kinetic Misalignment without Prejudice
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• Enhanced Early Galaxy Formation in JWST from Axion Dark Matter?
• Observable Gravitational Waves from Hyperkination in Palatini Gravity and Beyond
• Axiogenesis with a Heavy QCD Axion
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• The rise of the primordial tensor spectrum from an early scalar-tensor epoch
• Cosmic Perturbations from a Rotating Field
• Minimal solution to the axion isocurvature problem from a nonminimal coupling
• A universal bound on the duration of a kination era
• New Source for QCD Axion Dark Matter Production: Curvature Induced
• Cosmic superstrings in large volume compactifications: PTAs, LISA and time-varying tension
• Signatures of Very Early Dark Energy in the Matter Power Spectrum
• Crescendo Beyond the Horizon: More Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls Bounded by Inflated Cosmic Strings
• Multimodality in the Search for New Physics in Pulsar Timing Data and the Case of Kination-amplified Gravitational-wave Background from Inflation
• Ultraviolet Sensitivity of Peccei-Quinn Inflation
• Early universe dynamics of PQ field with very small self-coupling and its implications for axion dark matter
• R-Parity Violation Axiogenesis
• ALP Dark Matter from Kinetic Fragmentation: Opening up the Parameter Window
• Primordial Cosmology of an Emergent-like Universe from Modified Gravity: Reconstruction and Phenomenology Optimization with a Genetic Algorithm
• SageNet: Fast Neural Network Emulation of the Stiff-amplified Gravitational Waves from Inflation
• Imprints of an early matter-dominated era arising from dark matter dilution mechanism on cosmic string dynamics and gravitational wave signatures
• Gravitational Wave Gastronomy
• Searching Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Landscape Across Frequency Bands