High-quality Peccei-Quinn symmetry from the interplay of vertical and horizontal gauge symmetries

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Main Authors: Di Luzio, Luca, Landini, Giacomo, Mescia, Federico, Susič, Vasja
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Di Luzio, Luca
Landini, Giacomo
Mescia, Federico
Susič, Vasja
author_facet Di Luzio, Luca
Landini, Giacomo
Mescia, Federico
Susič, Vasja
contents We explore a class of axion models where an accidental $\mathrm{U}(1)$ Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry automatically emerges from the interplay of vertical (grand-unified) and horizontal (flavor) gauge symmetries. We study a specific Pati-Salam realization in detail, and aim to generalize the conclusions. We show that our specific model offers protection from PQ-violating operators to high dimension, and demonstrate that the model can reproduce the Standard Model flavor structure. A distinctive feature of the vertical-horizontal setup is the presence of parametrically light fermions, known as anomalons, which are introduced to cancel the gauge anomalies of the flavor symmetry. We also identify a major challenge to building a fully realistic model, most notably that of Landau poles in gauge couplings before the Planck scale. For the specific model investigated, the pre-inflationary PQ-breaking scenario predicts the axion mass window to be $m_a \in [2 \times 10^{-8}, 10^{-3}]\,\mathrm{eV}$. Conversely, a high-quality axion may be obtained instead in the post-inflationary scenario, with axion mass $m_a \gtrsim 0.01\,\mathrm{eV}$, and anomalon masses predicted below the $\mathrm{eV}$ scale. We elaborate on anomalons' cosmological production in the early universe, highlighting how measurements of $ΔN_{\rm eff}$ could serve as a low-energy probe of the ultraviolet dynamics addressing the PQ quality problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16648
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle High-quality Peccei-Quinn symmetry from the interplay of vertical and horizontal gauge symmetries
Di Luzio, Luca
Landini, Giacomo
Mescia, Federico
Susič, Vasja
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
We explore a class of axion models where an accidental $\mathrm{U}(1)$ Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry automatically emerges from the interplay of vertical (grand-unified) and horizontal (flavor) gauge symmetries. We study a specific Pati-Salam realization in detail, and aim to generalize the conclusions. We show that our specific model offers protection from PQ-violating operators to high dimension, and demonstrate that the model can reproduce the Standard Model flavor structure. A distinctive feature of the vertical-horizontal setup is the presence of parametrically light fermions, known as anomalons, which are introduced to cancel the gauge anomalies of the flavor symmetry. We also identify a major challenge to building a fully realistic model, most notably that of Landau poles in gauge couplings before the Planck scale. For the specific model investigated, the pre-inflationary PQ-breaking scenario predicts the axion mass window to be $m_a \in [2 \times 10^{-8}, 10^{-3}]\,\mathrm{eV}$. Conversely, a high-quality axion may be obtained instead in the post-inflationary scenario, with axion mass $m_a \gtrsim 0.01\,\mathrm{eV}$, and anomalon masses predicted below the $\mathrm{eV}$ scale. We elaborate on anomalons' cosmological production in the early universe, highlighting how measurements of $ΔN_{\rm eff}$ could serve as a low-energy probe of the ultraviolet dynamics addressing the PQ quality problem.
title High-quality Peccei-Quinn symmetry from the interplay of vertical and horizontal gauge symmetries
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16648