Axion periodicity and coupling quantization in the presence of mixing

DOI10.1007/JHEP05(2020)066zbMATH Open1437.81050arXiv1910.11349MaRDI QIDQ779338FDOQ779338

Authors: Katherine Fraser, Matthew Reece 

Publication date: 21 July 2020

Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Mixing of axion fields is widely used to generate EFTs with phenomenologically advantageous features, such as hierarchies between axion couplings to different gauge fields and/or large effective field ranges. While these features are strongly constrained by periodicity for models with only a single axion, mixing has been used in the literature (sometimes incorrectly) to try to evade some of these constraints. In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to use axion mixing to generate an EFT of axions that evades these constraints by flowing to a theory of a non-compact scalar in the IR. We conclude that as long as the light axion is exactly massless, it will inherit the periodicity and associated constraints of the UV theory. However, by giving the light axion a mass, we can relax these constraints with effects proportional to the axion mass squared, including non-quantized couplings and the realignment of monodromy to a light axion with a larger field range. To show this, we consider various examples of axions mixing with other axions or with non-compact scalar fields, and work in a basis where coupling quantization is manifest. This basis makes it clear that in the case where an axion is eaten through the Higgs or Stuckelberg mechanism, the light axion does not have a large effective field range, in contrast to some recent claims in the literature. Additionally, we relate our results about axion EFTs to a well-known fact about gauge theory: that QFTs with compact gauge groups in the UV flow to QFTs with compact gauge groups in the IR, and make this correspondence precise in the 2+1 dimensional case.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.11349

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zbMATH Keywords

beyond standard modeleffective field theories (EFT)

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Model quantum field theories (81T10) Effective quantum field theories (81T12)

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Cited In (8)

• ALPs, the on-shell way
• Axion couplings in grand unified theories
• Running beyond ALPs: shift-breaking and CP-violating effects
• The monodromic axion-photon coupling
• Axion effective action
• A mass for the dual axion
• Chern-Weil global symmetries and how quantum gravity avoids them
• Non-standard axion electrodynamics and the dual Witten effect

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