Renormalization group effects in astrophobic axion models

TL;DR

This paper investigates how renormalization group effects influence the parameter space and phenomenology of astrophobic axion models, confirming the viability of suppressed axion couplings after including quantum corrections.

Contribution

It extends previous tree-level analyses by incorporating renormalization group effects, demonstrating that astrophobic axion conditions remain viable with modified parameter regions.

Findings

Astrophobic axion conditions persist with RG effects included.

Parameter space for axion couplings is altered but still allows suppression.

RG effects impact flavor-violating axion observables.

Abstract

It has been recently pointed out that in certain axion models it is possible to suppress simultaneously both the axion couplings to nucleons and electrons, realising the so-called astrophobic axion scenarios, wherein the tight bounds from SN1987A and from stellar evolution of red giants and white dwarfs are greatly relaxed. So far, however, the conditions for realising astrophobia have only been set out in tree-level analyses. Here we study whether these conditions can still be consistently implemented once renormalization group effects are included in the running of axion couplings. We find that axion astrophobia keeps holding, albeit within fairly different parameter space regions, and we provide analytical insights into this result. Given that astrophobic axion models generally feature flavour violating axion couplings, we also assess the impact of renormalization group effects on axion-mediated flavour violating observables.