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Thermal Axion Production at Low Temperatures: A Smooth Treatment of the QCD Phase Transition

Francesco D’Eramo ^*, Fazlollah Hajkarim ^†, and Seokhoon Yun ^‡

Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy and INFN, Sezione di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy

^*francesco.deramo@pd.infn.it
^†fazlollah.hajkarim@pd.infn.it
^‡seokhoon.yun@pd.infn.it

Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 152001 – Published 13 April, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.152001

Abstract

We study thermal axion production around the confinement scale. At higher temperatures, we extend current calculations to account for the masses of heavy quarks, whereas we quantify production via hadron scattering at lower temperatures. Matching our results between the two opposite regimes provides us with a continuous axion production rate across the QCD phase transition. We employ such a rate to quantify the axion contribution to the effective number of neutrino species.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 152001– Published 13 April, 2022

Vol. 128, Iss. 15 — 15 April 2022

Received 2 September 2021
Accepted 23 March 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.152001

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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Thermal Axion Production at Low Temperatures: A Smooth Treatment of the QCD Phase Transition

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