The Axidental Universe

Understand

Theories with several hundred axion fields have enormous numbers of distinct meta-stable minima.

• A small fraction of these local minima have vacuum energy compatible with current measurements of dark energy.
• The potential also contains regions suitable for inflation, and gives rise to a natural type of dark matter.
• First-order phase transitions from one minimum to the vicinity of another play the role of big bangs and produce many bubbles containing evolving Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universes.