Indirect signs of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism

de Vries, J., Draper, P., Fuyuto, K., Kozaczuk, J. and Sutherland, D. (2019) Indirect signs of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism. Physical Review D, 99, 015042. (doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.015042)

Abstract

In the standard model, the renormalization of the QCD vacuum angle θ is extremely tiny, and small θ is technically natural. In the general standard model effective field theory (SMEFT), however, Δ θ is quadratically divergent, reflecting the fact that new sources of hadronic C P -violation typically produce O ( 1 ) threshold corrections to θ . The observation of such C P -violating interactions would therefore be in tension with solutions to the strong C P problem in which θ = 0 is an ultraviolet boundary condition, pointing to the Peccei-Quinn mechanism as the explanation for why θ is small in the infrared. We study the quadratic divergences in θ arising from dimension-6 SMEFT operators and discuss the discovery prospects for these operators at electric dipole moment experiments, the LHC, and future proton-proton colliders.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sutherland, Dr David
• Authors: de Vries, J., Draper, P., Fuyuto, K., Kozaczuk, J., and Sutherland, D.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Journal Name: Physical Review D
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• ISSN: 2470-0010
• ISSN (Online): 2470-0029
• Copyright Holders: Copyright 2018 © The Author(s)
• First Published: First published in Physical Review D 99:015042
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence