High Quality Axion via a Doubly Composite Dynamics

Abstract

We explore a new framework that furnishes a mechanism to simultaneously address the electroweak naturalness problem and the axion high quality problem. The framework is based on a doubly composite dynamics where the second confinement takes place after the CFT encounters the first confinement and the theory flows into another conformal fixed point. For a calculable example, we present a holographic dual description of the 4D model via a warped extra dimension model with three 3-branes. While the hierarchy problem is taken cared of by the localization of the Higgs fields on the TeV brane just as in the original Randall-Sundrum model, the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is realized as a gauge symmetry in the bulk of the extra dimension to solve the axion quality problem. We introduce a 5D scalar field whose potential at the intermediate brane drives spontaneous breaking of the PQ symmetry. Then, the PQ breaking scale is given by the scale of the intermediate brane and is naturally small compared to the Planck scale. The axion bulk profile is significantly suppressed around the UV brane, which protects the axion from gravitational violations of the PQ symmetry on the UV brane. Our model genuinely predicts the existence of the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the QCD axion at around the TeV scale and relatively light extra Higgs bosons.

Snowmass White Paper: Strong CP Beyond Axion Direct Detection

“…The local symmetry may be discrete [48][49][50][51] or continuous [52][53][54][55][56][57]. In composite axion models [58][59][60][61][62][63] the axion is a baryon-like particle, composed of quarks charged under a strongly coupled non-Abelian gauge group. In these models the confining dynamics often instigate the spontaneous breaking of U(1) PQ , so that the scale f a is generated dynamically.…”

Chiral models of composite axions and accidental Peccei-Quinn symmetry

“…Holographic constructions dual to composite axion models have been analysed in Refs. [26][27][28][29][30][31]. Finally, several alternative approaches to the quality problem where the axion is a fundamental field have been proposed in the literature; for an incomplete list of works, see for example Refs.…”