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Spontaneous symmetry breaking by axions?

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I am just reading at the beginning of this nice article, that axions could be responsible for spontaneously breaking of a symmetry in the early universe.

Does anybody know which symmetry is alluded to and how the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking exactly works in this particular case?

I'd like to learn in some more detail about this.

asked Jul 3, 2013 in Theoretical Physics by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ revision history ]

I apologize for not being able to better define the question, without having the answer ... :-/

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-09 16:17 (UCT), posted by SE-user Dilaton

commented Jul 3, 2013 by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ no revision ]

The original axion model has a global $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn symmetry which is spontaneously broken, but this has been ruled out. Nowadays people look at elaborated versions of the basic idea. A quick look at the Pospelov et al. preprint mentioned in the article shows they study a $Z_n$ invariant scalar. I'm really not very familiar with the details of these models though. PDG has a nice review.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-09 16:17 (UCT), posted by SE-user Michael Brown

commented Jul 3, 2013 by Michael Brown (115 points) [ no revision ]

Thanks for these interesting links @MichaelBrown :-), the second one seems to adress another question I have concerning the article I linked too, namely how the domain walls separating areas with different values of the axion field can contribut to dark energy.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-09 16:17 (UCT), posted by SE-user Dilaton

commented Jul 3, 2013 by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ no revision ]

@MichaelBrown I guess, I would +1 your nice comment in the format of an answer too, just to say ;-)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-09 16:17 (UCT), posted by SE-user Dilaton

commented Jul 3, 2013 by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ no revision ]

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