# Dynamical Clockwork Axions

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamical clockwork mechanism for axion models, avoiding elementary scalars and ad hoc symmetries, and demonstrates its application to generate an effectively invisible QCD axion from TeV-scale strong dynamics.

## Contribution

It presents a novel dynamical realization of the clockwork mechanism using strongly-coupled sectors, providing a new approach to axion model building.

## Key findings

- Constructed models with an effectively invisible QCD axion from TeV-scale dynamics.
- The axion couplings depend on the localization of Standard Model interactions.
- Dark matter candidates include the axion and neutral baryons.

## Abstract

The clockwork mechanism is a novel method for generating a large separation between the dynamical scale and interaction scale of a theory. We demonstrate how the mechanism can arise from a sequence of strongly-coupled sectors. This framework avoids elementary scalar fields as well as ad hoc continuous global symmetries, both of which are subject to serious stability issues. The clockwork factor, $q$, is determined by the consistency of the strong dynamics. The preserved global $U(1)$ of the clockwork appears as an accidental symmetry, resulting from discrete or $U(1)$ gauge symmetries, and it is spontaneously broken by the chiral condensates. We apply such a dynamical clockwork to construct models with an effectively invisible QCD axion from TeV-scale strong dynamics. The axion couplings are determined by the localisation of the Standard Model interactions along the clockwork sequence. The TeV spectrum includes either coloured hadrons or vector-like quarks. Dark matter can be accounted for by the axion or the lightest neutral baryons, which are accidentally stable.