Quantization leading to a natural flattening of the axion potential

TL;DR

Quantizing the axion with a cosine potential naturally results in a flattened potential, restoring its Goldstone-boson nature and yielding a vacuum energy density compatible with dark energy scales.

Contribution

This work demonstrates that quantization leads to a flattened axion potential, a novel insight into axion dynamics and its cosmological implications.

Findings

Axion potential becomes flat after quantization.

Restores the Goldstone-boson nature of the axion.

Vacuum energy density aligns with dark energy scales.

Abstract

Starting from the general cosine form for the axion effective potential, we quantize the axion and show that the result is described by a naturally flat potential, if interactions with other particles are not considered. This feature therefore restores the would-be Goldstone-boson nature of the axion, and we calculate the corresponding vacuum energy density, which does not need to be too large by orders of magnitude compared to Dark Energy.