Axion-like particles from soft supersymmetry breaking

We study a supersymmetric effective field theory in which the mass of an axion-like particle (ALP) is generated predominantly by soft supersymmetry-breaking effects. The Peccei--Quinn symmetry is exact in the supersymmetric limit and is explicitly broken only by soft terms induced by supergravity, leading to a naturally heavy ALP whose mass is controlled by the supersymmetry-breaking scale. We analyze the resulting ALP, saxion, and axino spectrum and investigate the phenomenological implications for laboratory searches, astrophysical observations, and cosmology. The framework is treated as an effective field theory without specifying a unique ultraviolet completion, and no attempt is made to explain the origin of a small strong CP phase, which is assumed to be suppressed by ultraviolet physics or by an independent mechanism. Instead, the focus is on the generic and testable phenomenology of heavy axion-like particles whose masses arise from supersymmetry breaking.