A light spectator field first creates and later disables an extra axion potential, letting axion domain walls decay and matching dark matter at larger decay constants.
A classification of scalar field potentials with cosmological scaling solutions
1 Pith paper cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
abstract
An attractive method of obtaining an effective cosmological constant at the present epoch is through the potential energy of a scalar field. Considering models with a perfect fluid and a scalar field, we classify all potentials for which the scalar field energy density scales as a power-law of the scale factor when the perfect fluid density dominates. There are three possibilities. The first two are well known; the much-investigated exponential potentials have the scalar field mimicking the evolution of the perfect fluid, while for negative power-laws, introduced by Ratra and Peebles, the scalar field density grows relative to that of the fluid. The third possibility is a new one, where the potential is a positive power-law and the scalar field energy density decays relative to the perfect fluid. We provide a complete analysis of exact solutions and their stability properties, and investigate a range of possible cosmological applications.
citation-role summary
citation-polarity summary
fields
hep-ph 1years
2025 1verdicts
CONDITIONAL 1roles
background 1polarities
unclear 1representative citing papers
citing papers explorer
-
Bias with a Timer: Axion Domain Wall Decay and Dark Matter
A light spectator field first creates and later disables an extra axion potential, letting axion domain walls decay and matching dark matter at larger decay constants.