Hypermagnetogenesis from axion inflation: model-independent estimates

Axion inflation coupled to the Standard Model (SM) hypercharge gauge sector represents an attractive scenario for the generation of primordial hypermagnetic fields. The description of this scenario is, however, complicated by the Schwinger effect, which gives rise to highly nonlinear dynamics. Hypermagnetogenesis during axion inflation in the absence of nonlinear effects is well studied and known to result in a hypermagnetic energy density that scales like <math display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mi>H</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>4</mn></mrow></msup><msup><mrow><mi>e</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn><mi>π</mi><mi>ξ</mi></mrow></msup><mo>/</mo><msup><mrow><mi>ξ</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>5</mn></mrow></msup></mrow></math>, where <math display="inline"><mi>ξ</mi></math> is proportional to the time derivative of the axion-vector coupling in units of the Hubble rate <math display="inline"><mi>H</mi></math>. In this paper, we generalize this result to the full SM case by consistently taking into account the Schwinger pair production of all SM fermions. To this end, we employ the novel gradient-expansion formalism that we recently developed [Phys. Rev. D 104, 123504 (2021)], which is based on a set of vacuum expectation values for bilinear hyperelectromagnetic functions in position space. We parametrize the numerical output of our formalism in terms of three parameters (<math display="inline"><mi>ξ</mi></math>, <math display="inline"><mi>H</mi></math>, and <math display="inline"><mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mi></math>, where the latter accounts for the damping of subhorizon gauge-field modes because of the finite conductivity of the medium) and work out semianalytical fit functions that describe our numerical results with high accuracy. Finally, we validate our results by comparing them to existing estimates in the literature as well as to the explicit numerical results in a specific inflationary model, which leads to good overall agreement. We conclude that the systematic uncertainties in the description of hypermagnetogenesis during axion inflation, which previously spanned up to several orders of magnitude, are now reduced to typically less than 1 order of magnitude, which paves the way for further phenomenological studies.