Windows on the axion

Physics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Peccei-Quinn symmetry is a very compelling, and perhaps the most minimal, extension of the standard model, in that it provides a very elegant solution to the nagging strong CP problem associated with the Θ-vacuum structure of QCD. Peccei-Quinn symmetry is spontaneously broken at an energy scale ƒ;PQ and as a consequence there should be a light, pseudo-scalar particle-the axion-whose mass ma ~ ƒ;PQ-1. At present, particle physics gives little guidance as to the mass of the axion (equivalently ƒ;PQ) a priori, the plausible values span the range: 10-12 eV <~ ma <~ 106 eV, some eighteen orders of magnitude. Laboratory experiments have excluded masses greater than about 104 eV, leaving unprobed some sixteen orders of magnitude. Fortunately, this very large ``window'' can-and has been-pared down by using the ``Heavenly Laboratory''. Axions have a host of interesting astrophysical and cosmological effects, among them modifying the evolution of stars of all types (our sun, red giants, white dwarfs, and neutron stars), contributing significantly to the mass density of the Universe today, and producing detectable line radiation through the decays of relic axions. Consideration of these effects has probed fourteen orders of magnitude in axion mass, and has left open only two windows for further exploration: 10-6 eV <~ ma <~ 10-3 eV and 2 eV <~ ma <~ 5 eV (hadronic axions only). Both of these windows are accessible to heavenly experiments. and a variety of very interesting experiments are being planned or are underway.

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