GRASS Seminar: ‘Axions, Three-Forms, and M-Theory’
January 14 | 15:00 - 17:00
Gravity, Supergravity and Superstrings (GRASS) Seminar
Speaker: Ziqi Yan (Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark)
Venue & Time: Red Room / 15:00
Abstract: Scalar fields with masses protected by global shift symmetries, commonly referred to as axions, are abundantly used in effective field theories in cosmology and particle physics. I will discuss a (4+1) dimensional braneworld construction for axion-like particles, where a 3-brane is coupled to a flux in the fifth dimension orthogonal to the brane, and its uplift to M-theory. From the (3+1)-dimensional perspective, this construction generates a mass for the axion and matches previously known proposals based on the coupling between the axion and a three-form gauge field.