Speaker
Description
Axions are conspicuous in particle physics; their role in physics beyond the Standard Model and cosmology cannot be overestimated. Despite the fact that they have been around for more than 40 years, recent formal developments have brought in new lessons on the interplay between axions and strong dynamics. In this talk, I discuss a new class of generalized 't Hooft anomalies that was recently identified, and then use the anomalies to argue that quarks are deconfined on axion domain walls. This phenomenon implies that a nontrivial intertwining between different scales happens on the walls; the simple effective cosine potential breaks down as the axion makes a large excursion in the field space. I also discuss the implication of this finding for models of natural inflation.
