Systematics of aligned axions

A bstract We describe a novel technique that renders theories of N axions tractable, and more generally can be used to efficiently analyze a large class of periodic potentials of arbitrary dimension. Such potentials are complex energy landscapes with a number of local minima that scales as N ! , and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of high energy physics 2017-11, Vol.2017 (11), p.1-55, Article 36
Main Authors: Bachlechner, Thomas C., Eckerle, Kate, Janssen, Oliver, Kleban, Matthew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classical and Quantum Gravitation
Effective Field Theories
Elementary Particles
High energy physics
Minima
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Quantum Physics
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Relativity Theory
String Theory
Superstring Vacua
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Summary:A bstract We describe a novel technique that renders theories of N axions tractable, and more generally can be used to efficiently analyze a large class of periodic potentials of arbitrary dimension. Such potentials are complex energy landscapes with a number of local minima that scales as N ! , and so for large N appear to be analytically and numerically intractable. Our method is based on uncovering a set of approximate symmetries that exist in addition to the N periods. These approximate symmetries, which are exponentially close to exact, allow us to locate the minima very efficiently and accurately and to analyze other characteristics of the potential. We apply our framework to evaluate the diameters of flat regions suitable for slow-roll inflation, which unifies, corrects and extends several forms of “axion alignment” previously observed in the literature. We find that in a broad class of random theories, the potential is smooth over diameters enhanced by N 3/2 compared to the typical scale of the potential. A Mathematica implementation of our framework is available online.
ISSN:1029-8479
1029-8479
DOI:10.1007/JHEP11(2017)036