Massless fermions and superconductivity of string-wall composites

A bstract An axion cosmic string is known to be a chiral superconductor when the axion couples to an electrically charged fermion. After the QCD phase transition, a QCD axion string is attached by N domain walls. We would like to elucidate the fate of massless fermions on a global string after domain walls attached not only in the axion model but also in general models having string-wall composites. We investigate the Dirac equation under various string-wall composite backgrounds both in the axion(-like) models and in the $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 supersymmetry inspired Abelian-Higgs models. We give an answer to the elementary question of whether massless fermions exist, and if so, where they are localized. The answer depends on fermion/boson masses in the models, and the massless fermion can be localized either on the string, on one of the domain walls, or in one of the vacua. We find analytic solutions for the fermion zero mode function by which we prove the existence of the massless fermion on the string-wall composites. We also show supercurrents flowing along the string-wall composites and anomalous electric currents flowing in from outside.