Cosmic Birefringence Triggered by Dark Matter Domination

Cosmic birefringence is predicted if an axionlike particle (ALP) moves after the recombination. We show that this naturally happens if the ALP is coupled to the dark matter density because it then acquires a large effective mass after the matter-radiation equality. Our scenario applies to a broad range of the ALP mass $m_{\varphi }\lesssim {10}^{-28}\mathrm{eV}$, even smaller than the present Hubble constant. We give a simple model to realize this scenario, where dark matter is made of hidden monopoles, which give the ALP such a large effective mass through the Witten effect. The mechanism works if the ALP decay constant is of order of the grand unified theory scale without a fine-tuning of the initial misalignment angle. For smaller decay constant, the hidden monopole can be a fraction of dark matter. We also study the implications for the QCD axion, and show that the domain wall problem can be solved by the effective mass.

Figure 1

The predicted rotation angle $\beta$ as a function of $c_H$. The solid, dashed, and dotted black lines correspond to $c_{\gamma }=12$, 9, 6, from top to bottom, respectively. We take the initial condition, $({\theta }_i,{\dot{\theta }}_i)=(-1,0)$. The shaded region shows the region favored by the Planck data.

Figure 2

The contour plot of the rotation angle $\beta$ as a function of $c_H$ and $c_{\gamma }({\theta }_{\min }-{\theta }_i)/2\pi$. The shaded region shows the observational hint for the isotropic CB.