On the wondrous stability of ALP dark matter

DOI10.1088/1475-7516/2020/03/052MaRDI QIDQ5068432zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Gonzalo Alonso-Álvarez, R. S. Gupta, Joerg Jaeckel, Michael Spannowsky

Publication date 6 April 2022

Published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.07885

zbMATH Keywords

axionsdark matter theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Resonance in context of PDEs (35B34) Strong interaction, including quantum chromodynamics (81V05) Other elementary particle theory in quantum theory (81V25) Quantum optics (81V80) Statistical mechanics of plasmas (82D10) Dark matter and dark energy (83C56)

Abstract: The very low mass and small coupling of axion-like particles (ALPs) is usually taken as a guarantor of their cosmological longevity, making them excellent dark matter candidates. That said, Bose enhancement could stimulate decays and challenge this paradigm. Here, we analyze and review the cosmological decay of ALPs into photons, taking Bose enhancement into account, thereby going beyond the usual naive perturbative estimate. At first glance, this calculation seems to yield an exponentially growing resonance and therefore an extremely fast decay rate. However, the redshifting of the decay products due to the expansion of the Universe as well as the effective plasma mass of the photon can prevent an efficient resonance. While this result agrees with existing analyses of the QCD axion, for more general ALPs that can feature an enhanced photon coupling, stability is only ensured by a combination of the expansion and the plasma effects.

Cites work

• Electromagnetic waves propagating in the string axiverse
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3045182 (Why is no real title available?)
• Misalignment & Co.: (pseudo-)scalar and vector dark matter with curvature couplings
• Monodromy Dark Matter
• Production of purely gravitational dark matter: the case of fermion and vector boson
• Realizing the relaxion from multiple axions and its UV completion with high scale supersymmetry
• Relic abundance of dark photon dark matter
• Vector coherent oscillation dark matter
• Vector dark matter production at the end of inflation
• Very light asymmetric dark matter

Cited in

(5)

• Gravitational waves from the fragmentation of axion-like particle dark matter
• Hidden photon dark matter interacting via axion-like particles
• ALP dark matter from kinetic fragmentation: opening up the parameter window
• How to suppress exponential growth—on the parametric resonance of photons in an axion background
• Decay of ALP condensates via gravitation-induced resonance

This page was built for publication: On the wondrous stability of ALP dark matter

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5068432)