Relaxion: A landscape without anthropics

Nelson, Ann; Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.96.113007

Title: Relaxion: A landscape without anthropics

Journal Article · Wed Dec 20 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Physical Review D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.113007· OSTI ID:1595818

Nelson, Ann ^[1]; Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda ^[1]

Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Dept. of Physics

The relaxion mechanism provides a potentially elegant solution to the hierarchy problem without resorting to anthropic or other fine-tuning arguments. This mechanism introduces an axion-like field, dubbed the relaxion, whose expectation value determines the electroweak hierarchy as well as the QCD strong $C P$ -violating $\bar{θ}$ parameter. During an inflationary period, the Higgs mass squared is selected to be negative and hierarchically small in a theory which is consistent with ’t Hooft’s technical naturalness criteria. However, in the original model proposed by Graham, Kaplan, and Rajendran, the relaxion does not solve the strong $C P$ problem, and in fact contributes to it, as the coupling of the relaxion to the Higgs field and the introduction of a linear potential for the relaxion produces large strong $C P$ violation. Herein we resolve this tension by considering inflation with a Hubble scale which is above the QCD scale but below the weak scale, and estimating the Hubble temperature dependence of the axion mass. The relaxion potential is thus very different during inflation than it is today. We find that provided the inflationary Hubble scale is between the weak scale and about 3 GeV, the relaxion resolves the hierarchy, strong $C P$ , and dark matter problems in a way that is technically natural.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0011637; PHY-1066293

OSTI ID:: 1595818

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1414328

Report Number(s):: arXiv:1708.00010v2; PRVDAQ; TRN: US2101497

Journal Information:: Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 11; ISSN 2470-0010

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 22 works

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Nelson-Barr relaxion Davidi, Oz; Gupta, Rick S.; Perez, Gilad Physical Review D, Vol. 99, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.99.035014	journal	February 2019
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Light Higgs boson from a pole attractor Matsedonskyi, Oleksii; Montull, Marc Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, DESY, Hamburg https://doi.org/10.3204/pubdb-2018-03262	text	January 2018
Relaxion Dark Matter Fonseca, Nayara; Morgante, Enrico Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, DESY, Hamburg https://doi.org/10.3204/pubdb-2020-00279	text	January 2019
Relaxion dark matter Fonseca, Nayara; Morgante, Enrico Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.100.055010	journal	September 2019
Light Higgs boson from a pole attractor Matsedonskyi, Oleksii; Montull, Marc Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.98.015026	journal	July 2018
Relaxion Dark Matter Fonseca, Nayara; Morgante, Enrico arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1809.04534	text	January 2018

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