Axions from Strings

by Giovanni Villadoro

Friday 25 Jan 2019, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Zurich

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

If a PQ phase was ever restored after inflation the evolution of the QCD axion field would be dominated by topological defects, such as strings and domain walls. While in this case the relic abundance of axions is in principle completely calculable in terms of the axion mass, in practice no reliable analytic tool is available. I will first review the physics underlying the production and evolution of axionic strings and how they can lead to suitable DM axions. I will then present results from recent field theory simulations and discuss about the implications for axion dark matter.