Baryogenesis from strong CP violation and the QCD axion.

We show that strong CP violation from the QCD axion can be responsible for the matter antimatter asymmetry of the Universe in the context of cold electroweak baryogenesis if the electroweak phase transition is delayed below the GeV scale. This can occur naturally if the Higgs couples to a O(100)  GeV dilaton, as expected in some models where the Higgs is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a new strongly interacting sector at the TeV scale. The existence of such a second scalar resonance with a mass and properties similar to the Higgs boson will soon be tested at the LHC. In this context, the QCD axion would not only solve the strong CP problem, but also the matter antimatter asymmetry and dark matter.