Spectra of fermions produced by a time-dependent axion in the radiation- and matter-dominated Universe

Abstract Axion-like degrees of freedom generally interact with fermions through a shift symmetric coupling. As a consequence, a time-dependent axion will lead to the generation of fermions by amplifying their vacuum fluctuations. We provide the formulae that allow one to determine the spectra of produced fermions in a generic Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker Universe with flat spatial slices. Then we derive simple approximate formulae for the spectra of the produced fermions, as a function of the model parameters, in the specific cases of a radiation- and a matter-dominated Universe, in the regime in which the backreaction of the produced fermions on the axionic background can be neglected.