“Spectrum of Global Strings and the Axion Dark Matter Mass”
Axions stand out as some of the most compelling dark matter candidates, driving a surge of theoretical and experimental developments in recent years. In this talk I will discuss new results on the properties of QCD axions based on large scale numerical simulations of the cosmological evolution of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) field on a static lattice.
Cold dark matter axions produced in the post-inflationary scenario serve as clear targets for their experimental detection, since it is in principle possible to give a prediction for their mass once we understand precisely how they are produced from the decay of global cosmic strings in the early Universe. We performed a dedicated analysis of the spectrum of axions radiated from strings, giving rise to a prediction of the QCD axion dark matter mass in the range of ma ≈ 95-450μ. This prediction pinpoints target regions in the parameter space for direct axion searches with haloscopes such as HAYSTAC and the future plasma haloscope experiment ALPHA, both hosted at Wright Lab at Yale, which operate slightly below and in the upper range of our predicted mass range, respectively.
Host: M. Gonzalez, X. Yang, & J. Lap
This event is co-hosted with the Yale Center for the Invisible Universe