Relaxing Axions

Abstract

A mechanism for lifting the cosmological upper bound on the axion decay constant, $f_a$, is proposed. It entails the near masslessness of the radial mode whose vacuum expectation value is $f_a$. Energy in the coherent oscillations of the axion field in the early universe gets fed into the motion of the radial mode, from which it is then redshifted away.

Comments: LaTex 12 pages