Academic Journal
Non-standard axion electrodynamics and the dual Witten effect.
| Title: | Non-standard axion electrodynamics and the dual Witten effect. |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Heidenreich, Ben, McNamara, Jacob, Reece, Matthew |
| Source: | Journal of High Energy Physics; Jan2024, Vol. 2024 Issue 1, p1-34, 34p |
| Abstract: | Standard axion electrodynamics has two closely related features. First, the coupling of a massless axion field to photons is quantized, in units proportional to the electric gauge coupling squared. Second, the equations of motion tell us that a time-dependent axion field in a background magnetic field sources an effective electric current, but a time-dependent axion field in a background electric field has no effect. These properties, which manifestly violate electric-magnetic duality, play a crucial role in experimental searches for axions. Recently, electric-magnetic duality has been used to motivate the possible existence of non-standard axion couplings, which can both violate the usual quantization rule and exchange the roles of electric and magnetic fields in axion electrodynamics. We show that these non-standard couplings can be derived from SL(2,ℤ) duality, but that they come at a substantial cost: in non-standard axion electrodynamics, all electrically charged particles become dyons when the axion traverses its field range, in a dual form of the standard Witten effect monodromy. This implies that there are dyons near the weak scale, leads to a large axion mass induced by Standard Model fermion loops, and dramatically alters Higgs physics. We conclude that non-standard axion electrodynamics, although interesting to consider in abstract quantum field theory, is not phenomenologically viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| ISSN: | 11266708 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/JHEP01(2024)120 |
| Database: | Complementary Index |