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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Journal of High Energy Physics

Axion couplings in orbifold GUTs

  • Prateek Agrawal1,2
  • Michael Nee3
  • Mario Reig2,4
4 affiliations
  1. 1University of California
  2. 2University of Oxford
  3. 3Harvard University
  4. 4Theoretical Physics Department, CERN
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Abstract

A bstract : We consider the coupling of axions to gauge bosons in higher-dimensional Grand Unified Theories (GUT) inspired by string theory constructions with D-branes on orbifold singularities, the so-called orbifold GUTs. Due to their topological properties, axion couplings to gauge bosons are independent of the gauge symmetry reduction mechanism and the background geometry — they only depend on the embedding of the SM into the UV gauge group. There are two kinds of axions in this class of theories: axions coming from gauge fields in the bulk and axions localised on the boundaries. The axion-photon coupling for the bulk axions coincide with the results from 4-dimensional GUTs, where axions which couple to photons necessarily couple also to QCD. The brane-localised axions can couple to photons independently of the QCD coupling, but if gauge couplings are approximately unified, they have a much more severe quality problem. We show that in generic UV completions they are expected to get large masses from instantons on the boundaries. This means that the ratio g aγγ / m a is below (or equal to) the QCD axion value for all axions in orbifold GUTs, as is the case for unified theories in 4d.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{agrawal2026axion,
  title = {{Axion couplings in orbifold GUTs}},
  author = {Prateek Agrawal and Michael Nee and Mario Reig},
  journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1007/jhep10(2026)032},
  url = {https://link.springer.com/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)032},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Axion couplings in orbifold GUTs
AU  - Prateek Agrawal
AU  - Michael Nee
AU  - Mario Reig
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/02
JO  - Journal of High Energy Physics
DO  - 10.1007/jhep10(2026)032
UR  - https://link.springer.com/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)032
AB  - A bstract : We consider the coupling of axions to gauge bosons in higher-dimensional Grand Unified Theories (GUT) inspired by string theory constructions with D-branes on orbifold singularities, the so-called orbifold GUTs. Due to their topological properties, axion couplings to gauge bosons are independent of the gauge symmetry reduction mechanism and the background geometry — they only depend on the embedding of the SM into the UV gauge group. There are two kinds of axions in this class of theories: axions coming from gauge fields in the bulk and axions localised on the boundaries. The axion-photon coupling for the bulk axions coincide with the results from 4-dimensional GUTs, where axions which couple to photons necessarily couple also to QCD. The brane-localised axions can couple to photons independently of the QCD coupling, but if gauge couplings are approximately unified, they have a much more severe quality problem. We show that in generic UV completions they are expected to get large masses from instantons on the boundaries. This means that the ratio g aγγ / m a is below (or equal to) the QCD axion value for all axions in orbifold GUTs, as is the case for unified theories in 4d.
SN  - 1029-8479
ER  -