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  • Open Access

High-quality composite Pati-Salam axion

Tony Gherghetta1,*, Hitoshi Murayama2,3,4,†, and Pablo Quílez5,‡

  • *Contact author: tgher@umn.edu
  • †Contact author: hitoshi@berkeley.edu, hitoshi.murayama@ipmu.jp
  • ‡Contact author: pquilez@ucsd.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 095036 – Published 24 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/f1dg-n9h7

Abstract

We present a composite QCD axion model where the Peccei-Quinn symmetry emerges as a high-quality, accidental symmetry. The axion potential is only modified by eight-fermion, dimension-12 operators, which if present at the Planck scale, allow for axion dark matter from misalignment while solving the strong CP problem. The model is an SU(Nc) gauge theory with ten flavors where the Pati-Salam unified subgroup SO(6)×SO(4)⊂SU(10)L and Sp(10)⊂SU(10)R are weakly gauged. The dynamics breaks SU(10)L×SU(10)R→SU(10)V and the weakly gauged groups to U(3)×U(2)⊃SU(3)c×SU(2)L×U(1)Y, with the QCD axion identified as one of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons. This axion has a relatively large coupling to photons while a residual θ¯eff may be just below the current limit on the neutron electric dipole moment. If the dimension-12 operators are present near the grand unified theory scale, they can cause domain wall networks to decay, allowing for axion dark matter even for the postinflationary scenario.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 095036– Published 24 November, 2025
  • Received 1 June 2025
  • Accepted 13 October 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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