2021/10/31 by Pierre Sikivie, Wei Xue · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.105.043533
18 pages, 4 figures. A few typographical errors were corrected. Version to appear in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2022/02/28 · arxiv updated 2022/03/09
We find that the adiabatic fluctuations produced in the primordial plasma by cosmological inflation resonantly excite the axion field during the QCD phase transition by pumping axions from low momentum modes to modes with momentum up to of order √(3) m where m is the axion mass. We derive the momentum distribution of the excited axions. The fraction of cold axions that get excited is of order one if the axion mass is larger than a few μeV. The effect occurs whether inflation happens before or after the Peccei-Quinn phase transition.