{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/the-axion-quality-problem-global-symmetry","title":"The Axion Quality Problem: Global Symmetry Breaking and Wormholes","arxiv_id":"2009.03917","date":"2020-09-08","proceeding":null,"authors":["James Alvey","Miguel Escudero"],"abstract":"Continuous global symmetries are expected to be broken by gravity, which can lead to important phenomenological consequences. A prime example is the threat that this poses to the viability of the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP problem. In this paper, we explore the impact of wormholes as a source of global symmetry breaking by gravity. We review the current status of wormholes and global symmetries and note that, surprisingly, the axion has a quality problem within non-perturbative Einstein gravity. Although these wormholes lead to a large breaking of global symmetries, we show that their effect is nonetheless relevant for the model building of gauge protected axions. We also find wormhole solutions within two scenarios: (i) an extended global symmetry group within Einstein gravity, and (ii) U(1) wormholes within the low-energy limit of an open String Theory. The former allows us to show that the concept of a global symmetry in General Relativity is somewhat ill-defined. The latter illustrates that for motivated values of the string coupling constant, axions appear to have a quality problem within the open String Theory we consider.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03917v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.03917v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"the-axion-quality-problem-global-symmetry","repo_url":"https://github.com/james-alvey-42/WormholeFinder","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}