Inflationary Axion Cosmology Beyond Our Horizon

In theories of axion dark matter with large axion decay constant, temperature variations in the CMB are extremely sensitive to perturbations in the initial axion field, allowing one to place a lower bound on the total amount of inflation. The most stringent bound comes from axion strings, which for axion decay constant f=10^17 GeV would currently be observable at a distance of 6 x 10^16 light-years, nearly ten million times as far away as our horizon.

This work was supported in part by the DOE under contracts DE-FG03096-ER4095 and DE-FGO3-00ER41132, by the Spanish MEC grant SAB2006-0089 and project FPA2006-05423, and the regional Comunidad de Madrid HEPHACOS project.

5 pages.-- PACS numbers: 14.80.Mz,98.80.-k,98.80.Cq,11.27.+d, 98.80.Cq

Peer reviewed

Related Organizations

Washington State University
United States
University of Mary
United States
Washington State University Spokane
United States
University of Washington
United States
University of Mary Washington
United States

Keywords

Nuclear Theory (nucl-th), High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph), Nuclear Theory, Astrophysics (astro-ph), FOS: Physical sciences, Astrophysics

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