Cogenesis of baryon and dark matter with PBH and QCD axion

TL;DR

This paper explores how primordial black holes and QCD axions can jointly explain baryon and dark matter genesis, predicting detectable gravitational waves and axion signals that extend current experimental reach.

Contribution

It introduces a scenario where evaporating primordial black holes provide entropy injection, linking axion decay constants, leptogenesis, and dark matter in a testable framework.

Findings

Primordial black hole evaporation can produce observable gravitational wave backgrounds.

Axion decay constants can be probed via gravitational waves and axion experiments.

Dark radiation from axions may be detectable in future cosmic microwave background observations.

Abstract

With entropy injection, an early matter-dominated epoch (EMD) impels the axion decay constant $f_a$ towards larger values to produce correct axion dark matter (DM) abundance, thereby unfolding the low-mass axion ($m_a\lesssim 10^{-5}$ eV) parameter space to be searched for in axion experiments. We implement this proposition in a scenario where $f_a$ and the leptogenesis scale in a seesaw mechanism are equivalent. We show, that if instead, the EMD is provided by evaporating ultralight primordial black holes (PBH), the scenario becomes strikingly testable with gravitational waves (GW) background alongside the axion searches. In particular, while being consistent with correct axion DM abundance, the scale $f_a\gtrsim 10^{12}$ GeV, corresponding to the unflavored regime of leptogenesis with hierarchical right-handed neutrinos, can be probed with GW and axion experiments, which is otherwise not testable at neutrino or collider experiments. Additionally, axions produced from PBH evaporation can give rise to dark radiation within reach of future cosmic microwave background experiments.