Speaker
Naoya Kitajima
(Tohoku University, Japan)
Description
We point out that domain wall formation is a more common phenomenon in the Axiverse
than previously thought. Level crossing could take place if there is a mixing between axions,
and if some of the axions acquire a non-zero mass through non-perturbative effects as
the corresponding gauge interactions become strong. The axion potential
changes significantly during the level crossing, which affects the axion dynamics in various ways.
We find that, if there is a mild hierarchy in the decay constants, the axion starts to run along the valley of the
potential, passing through many crests and troughs, until it gets trapped in one of the minima; the
"axion roulette". The axion dynamics exhibits a chaotic behavior during the oscillations,
and which minimum the axion is finally stabilized is highly sensitive to the initial misalignment angle.
Therefore, the axion roulette is considered to be accompanied by domain wall formation.
We also propose a new scenario of baryogenesis, in which annihilation
of axion domain walls generates a sizable baryon asymmetry.
In particular, it is consistent with high-scale inflation which generates
a large tensor-to-scalar ratio within the reach of future CMB B-mode experiments.
The gravitational waves produced by the domain wall annihilation and its
implications for the future gravitational wave experiments are also discussed.
