The Electroweak Axion, Dark Energy, Inflation and Baryonic Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how an electroweak axion could explain dark energy, inflation, and baryon asymmetry, proposing that the axion's modulus field plays a key role in these cosmological phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that the axion modulus field may be linked to inflation and baryogenesis, extending previous models to include these cosmological aspects.

Findings

The model naturally accounts for observed dark energy values.

Axion modulus condensation may drive inflation.

Particle decays related to the axion field could produce baryon asymmetry.

Abstract

In a previous paper, the standard model was generalized to include an electroweak axion which carries baryon plus lepton number, $B+L$. It was shown that such a model naturally gives the observed value of the dark energy, if the scale of explicit baryon number violation was chosen to be of the order of the Planck mass. In this paper, we consider the effect of the modulus of the axion field. Such a field must condense in order to generate the standard Goldstone boson associated with the phase of the axion field. This condensation breaks baryon number. We argue that this modulus might be associated with inflation. If an additional $B-L$ violating scalar is introduced with a mass similar to that of the modulus of the axion field, we argue that decays of particles associated with this field might generate an acceptable baryon asymmetry.