Abstract
A QCD axion with a decay constant below 1011 GeV is a strongly-motivated extension to the Standard Model, though its relic abundance from the misalignment mechanism or decay of cosmic defects is insufficient to explain the origin of dark matter. Nevertheless, such an axion may still play an important role in setting the dark matter density if it mediates a force between the SM and the dark sector. In this work, we explore QCD axion-mediated freeze-out and freeze-in scenarios, finding that the axion can play a critical role for setting the dark matter density. Assuming the axion solves the strong CP problem makes this framework highly predictive, and we comment on experimental targets.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Stefano Profumo and Francesco D’Eramo for valuable insights about early universe axion physics, and Aditya Parikh for clarifications on Sommerfeld enhancement in pseudoscalar mediated self-interacting dark matter. This research was supported in part by NSF CAREER grant PHY-1915852, in part by the U.S. Department of Energy grant number DE-SC0023093, and in part by the Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. Part of this work was performed at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-1607611.
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Dror, J.A., Gori, S. & Munbodh, P. QCD axion-mediated dark matter. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 128 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2023)128
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2023)128