Structure of axionic domain walls

Early-Universe Simulations of the Cosmological Axion

Ultracompact dark matter (DM) minihalos at masses at and below 10^{-12}  M_{⊙} arise in axion DM models where the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is broken after inflation. The minihalos arise from density perturbations that are generated from the nontrivial axion self-interactions during and shortly after the collapse of the axion-string and domain-wall network. We perform high-resolution simulations of this scenario starting at the epoch before the PQ phase transition and ending at matter-radiation equality. We characterize the spectrum of primordial perturbations that are generated and comment on implications for efforts to detect axion DM. We also measure the DM density at different simulated masses and argue that the correct DM density is obtained for m_{a}=25.2±11.0  μeV.

Electromagnetic Signatures of the Chiral Anomaly in Weyl Semimetals

Weyl semimetals are predicted to realize the three-dimensional axial anomaly first discussed in particle physics. The anomaly leads to unusual transport phenomena such as the chiral magnetic effect in which an applied magnetic field induces a current parallel to the field. Here we investigate diagnostics of the axial anomaly based on the fundamental equations of axion electrodynamics. We find that materials with Weyl nodes of opposite chirality and finite energy separation immersed in a uniform magnetic field exhibit an anomaly-induced oscillatory magnetic field with a period set by the chemical potential difference of the nodes. In the case where a chemical potential imbalance is created by applying parallel electric and magnetic fields, we find a suppression of the magnetic-field component parallel to the electric field inside the material for rectangular samples, suggesting that the chiral magnetic current opposes this imbalance. For cylindrical geometries, we instead find an enhancement of this magnetic-field component along with an anomaly-induced azimuthal component. We propose experiments to detect such magnetic signatures of the axial anomaly.

Electric-magnetic duality and topological insulators

We work out the action of the SL(2,Z) electric-magnetic duality group for an insulator with a nontrivial permittivity, permeability, and theta angle. This theory has recently been proposed to be the correct low-energy effective action for topological insulators. As applications, we give manifestly SL(2,Z) covariant expressions for the Faraday rotation at orthogonal incidence at the interface of two such materials, as well as for the induced magnetic and electric charges, slightly clarifying the meaning of expressions previously derived in the literature. We also use electric-magnetic duality to find a gravitational dual for a strongly coupled version of this theory using the gauge/gravity correspondence.

Extended symmetrical classical electrodynamics

In this paper, we discuss a modification of classical electrodynamics in which "ordinary" point charges are absent. The modified equations contain additional terms describing the induced charges and currents. The densities of the induced charges and currents depend on the vector k and the vectors of the electromagnetic field, E and B . It is shown that the vectors E and B can be defined in terms of two four-potentials and the components of k are the components of a four-tensor of the third rank. The Lagrangian of the modified electrodynamics is defined. The conditions are derived at which only one four-potential determines the behavior of the electromagnetic field. It is also shown that static modified electrodynamics can describe the electromagnetic field in the inner region of an electric monopole. In the outer region of the electric monopole the electric field is governed by the Maxwell equations. It follows from boundary conditions at the interface between the inner and outer regions of the monopole that the vector k has a discrete spectrum. The electric and magnetic fields, energy, and angular momentum of the monopole are found for different eigenvalues of k .

Primordial galactic magnetic fields from domain walls at the QCD phase transition

We propose a mechanism to generate large-scale magnetic fields with correlation lengths of 100 kpc. Domain walls with QCD-scale internal structure form and coalesce, obtaining Hubble-scale correlations while aligning nucleon spins. Because of strong CP violation, the walls are ferromagnetic, which induces electromagnetic fields with Hubble-size correlations. The CP violation also induces a maximal helicity (Chern-Simons) which supports an "inverse cascade," allowing the initial correlations to grow to 100 kpc today. We estimate the generated electromagnetic fields in terms of the QCD parameters and discuss the effects of the resulting fields.