We discuss the possibility that dark matter axions form a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) due to the gravitational self interactions. The formation of BEC occurs in the condensed regime, where the transition rate between different momentum states is large compared to the energy exchanged in the transition. The time evolution of the quantum state occupation number of axions in the condensed regime is derived based on the in-in formalism. We recover the expression for the thermalization rate due to self interaction of the axion field, which was obtained in the other literature. It is also found that the leading order contributions for interactions between axions and other species vanish, which implies that the axion BEC does not give any significant modifications on standard cosmological parameters.

DOI: will be assignedThe International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a new generation axion helioscope aiming at a sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling of gaγ few × 10 −12 GeV −1 , i.e. 1-1.5 orders of magnitude beyond the one currently achieved by CAST. The project relies on improvements in magnetic field volume together with extensive use of x-ray focusing optics and low background detectors, innovations already successfully tested in CAST. Additional physics cases of IAXO could include the detection of electron-coupled axions invoked to explain the white dwarf cooling, relic axions, and a large variety of more generic axionlike particles (ALPs) and other novel excitations at the low-energy frontier of elementary particle physics. This contribution is a summary of our recent paper [1].

The axion arises in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as an alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm to explain the nature of dark matter. In this contribution, we review theoretical aspects of dark matter axions, particularly focusing on recent developments in the estimation of their relic abundance. A closer look at their non-thermal production mechanisms in the early universe reveals the possibility of explaining the observed dark matter abundance in various mass ranges. The mass ranges predicted in various cosmological scenarios are briefly summarized.

Minimal chaotic models of D-term inflation predicts too large primordial tensor perturbations. Although it can be made consistent with observations utilizing higher order terms in the Kähler potential, expansion is not controlled in the absence of symmetries. We comprehensively study the conditions of Kähler potential for D-term plateau-type potentials and discuss its symmetry. They include the α-attractor model with a massive vector supermultiplet and its generalization leading to pole inflation of arbitrary order. We extend the models so that it can describe Coulomb phase, gauge anomaly is cancelled, and fields other than inflaton are stabilized during inflation. We also point out a generic issue for large-field D-term inflation that the masses of the non-inflaton fields tend to exceed the Planck scale. #1 This terminology should not be confused with the pole-law inflation [19] proposed decades ago. #2 For recent reviews of inflation in supergravity, see