TY - JOUR
T1 - Constraining axion dark matter with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
AU - Blum, Kfir
AU - D'Agnolo, Raffaele Tito
AU - Lisanti, Mariangela
AU - Safdi, Benjamin R.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Nima Arkani-Hamed, Peter Graham, Samuel Lee, Aaron Pierce, Surjeet Rajendran, Juan Maldacena, Edward Witten, and Matias Zaldarriaga for useful discussions. K.B. was supported by the DOE grant de-sc0009988 . B.R.S. was supported by the NSF grant PHY-1314198 . R.T.D. was supported by the NSF grant PHY-0907744 .
PY - 2014/10/7
Y1 - 2014/10/7
N2 - We show that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) significantly constrains axion-like dark matter. The axion acts like an oscillating QCD θ angle that redshifts in the early Universe, increasing the neutron-proton mass difference at neutron freeze-out. An axion-like particle that couples too strongly to QCD results in the underproduction of He4 during BBN and is thus excluded. The BBN bound overlaps with much of the parameter space that would be covered by proposed searches for a time-varying neutron EDM. The QCD axion does not couple strongly enough to affect BBN.
AB - We show that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) significantly constrains axion-like dark matter. The axion acts like an oscillating QCD θ angle that redshifts in the early Universe, increasing the neutron-proton mass difference at neutron freeze-out. An axion-like particle that couples too strongly to QCD results in the underproduction of He4 during BBN and is thus excluded. The BBN bound overlaps with much of the parameter space that would be covered by proposed searches for a time-varying neutron EDM. The QCD axion does not couple strongly enough to affect BBN.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84906497351&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84906497351&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.physletb.2014.07.059
DO - 10.1016/j.physletb.2014.07.059
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84906497351
SN - 0370-2693
VL - 737
SP - 30
EP - 33
JO - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
ER -