Kernphysikalisches Kolloquium

Location: ITP, Science Campus Riedberg, Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, room 02.116
Time: Thursday, November 15, 2012, 16:30-17:30 (plus 10min for discussion)
Contact: hees@fias.uni-frankfurt.de

Dark Energy, the Standard Model and an Electroweak Axion

Larry McLerran (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

I consider the standard model to be valid, with the addition of an electroweak axion, to an energy of the order of the Planck scale. If there is explicit baryon plus lepton number violation at the Planck scale, the axion acquires a mass due to instanton effects. This induces a vacuum energy associated with the induced axion mass. The coupling constant appearing in the instant induced mass is that of electroweak theory evaluated at the Planck mass, and gives a numerically correct value for the observed dark energy. In such a theory, the smallest physical lneght scale, the Planck length, is related to the largest, the size of the universe.