Ultralight Dark Matter from the Edge of Field Space

Abstract

We introduce a novel class of bosonic dark matter candidates that we dub wallions, featuring boundaries in field space. The wallion mass is exponentially suppressed when the separation between boundaries far exceeds their intrinsic width and remains radiatively stable under self-interactions. We study the early-universe evolution of wallions and the associated cosmological signatures. Finally, we show that instanton effects can dynamically generate field-space boundaries and discuss possible experimental probes once the wallion couples to Standard Model fields.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Numerical evaluation of $f(x)$ from Eq. \ref{['eq:RelicDensity_Misaligned']} for the axion (dashed blue) and wallion (solid red) potentials.
• Figure 2: Wallion parameter space in the $(m_\phi,\Lambda^{-1})$ plane. See text for a detailed description.
• Figure 3: Phenomenology of wallion-photon interactions in the $(m_\phi,\Lambda^{-1})$ plane. See text for a detailed description.