Presented By: HET Brown Bag Series
HET Brown Bag Seminar | Crucial Effects of Saxion Cosmology on Dark Matter
Raymond Co
In supersymmetry, the lightest supersymmetric particles (LSP) are well-motivated candidatesfor dark matter. When the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is evoked to solve the strong CP problem, the axion becomes another viable candidate. The axion's scalar superpartner, the saxion, however significantly changes the conventional picture. During inflation, a potential for saxions is induced and displaces the saxion field value away from the vev today. This results in a large saxion condensate that dominates the energy density of the Universe. The saxion subsequently decays to the particles in the thermal bath, generating a large amount of entropy and diluting the dark matter abundance. We focus on the cases where dark matter is the axion from the misalignment mechanism, or the axino/gravitino LSP that arises from the thermal scattering and Freeze-In processes. The former case allows the PQ symmetry and grand unification to be of the same origin, whereas the latter case allows a high reheat temperature after inflation, solving the axino/graviton problems. We will also discuss interesting phenomenology for this class of theories, e.g. dark radiation and displaced vertices at colliders.
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