QCD axion and topological susceptibility in chiral effective Lagrangian models at finite temperature

In this work we compute the axion mass and, from this (exploiting a well-known relation), we also derive an expression for the QCD topological susceptibility in the finite-temperature case, both below and above the chiral phase transition at T-c, making use of a chiral effective Lagrangian model which includes the axion, the scalar and pseudoscalar mesons and implements the U(1) axial anomaly of the fundamental theory. We also provide a numerical estimate of the topological susceptibility at T = 0 (in the physical case of three light quark flavors) and discuss the question of the temperature and quark-mass dependence of the topological susceptibility in the high-temperature regime.