Axion cold dark matter revisited

TL;DR

This paper investigates the specific parameter ranges where axions could constitute all cold dark matter, considering recent cosmological data and different symmetry-breaking scenarios, with an emphasis on anharmonic effects in the potential.

Contribution

It provides updated constraints on axion parameters for dark matter, incorporating recent data and improved anharmonicity treatment, distinguishing scenarios based on symmetry-breaking timing.

Findings

Axion mass around 85 μeV can account for all dark matter if symmetry is restored after inflation.

For symmetry broken during inflation, axions with mass less than 15 meV can be all dark matter with specific initial conditions.

Anharmonic effects in the axion potential are significant in certain parameter regimes.

Abstract

We study for what specific values of the theoretical parameters the axion can form the totality of cold dark matter. We examine the allowed axion parameter region in the light of recent data collected by the WMAP5 mission plus baryon acoustic oscillations and supernovae \cite{komatsu}, and assume an inflationary scenario and standard cosmology. We also upgrade the treatment of anharmonicities in the axion potential, which we find important in certain cases. If the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is restored after inflation, we recover the usual relation between axion mass and density, so that an axion mass $m_a =(85 \pm 3){\rm \mu eV}$ makes the axion 100% of the cold dark matter. If the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken during inflation, the axion can instead be 100% of the cold dark matter for $m_a < 15{\rm meV}$ provided a specific value of the initial misalignment angle $\theta_i$ is chosen in correspondence to a given value of its mass $m_a$. Large values of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scale correspond to small, perhaps uncomfortably small, values of the initial misalignment angle $\theta_i$.