Dark Energy, Dark Matter and baryogenesis from a model of a complex axion field

Abstract

We introduce and study a model designed to simultaneously shed light on the mysteries connected with Baryogenesis, Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The model describes a self-interacting complex axion field whose imaginary part, a pseudo-scalar axion, couples to the instanton density of gauge fields including the hypercharge field. This coupling may give rise to baryogenesis in the early universe. After tracing out the gauge and matter degrees of freedom, a non-trivial effective potential for the angular component of the axion field is obtained. It is proposed that oscillations of this component around a minimum of its effective potential can be interpreted as Dark Matter. The absolute value of the axion field rolls slowly towards 0. At late times, it can give rise to Dark Energy.