Variations on the SU(5) axion

Abstract

The simultaneous embeddings of an axion state and a seesaw mechanism within the SU(5) Grand Unification Theory, both minimal and flipped, are systematically studied. It is shown that whenever B-L is active as a global symmetry, the PQ charges of the fermions are ambiguous. Various realizations of the seesaw mechanism are then found to differ only in the way this ambiguity is resolved. But since the ambiguity is unphysical, all these models are thereby predicted to be equivalent, in the sense that the axion phenomenology is identical at the low energy scale.