English

Falsifying Anthropics

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-12-11 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We propose using fuzzy axion dark matter to test the anthropic principle. A very light axion can be directly detectable, at least by black hole superradiance effects. The idea then is that gravitational and astrophysical observations can discover a light axion in the regime where it must be all of dark matter with abundance which must be set up by the anthropic principle, due to excessive primordial misalignment induced by inflation-induced Brownian drift of fluctuations. Yet it may turn out that dark matter is something else instead of this axion. Since the de Sitter-induced axion misalignment controlled only by the de Sitter curvature cannot be evaded, this would invalidate the anthropic prediction of the dark matter abundance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.02993,
  title  = {Falsifying Anthropics},
  author = {Nemanja Kaloper and Alexander Westphal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.02993},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

12 pages LaTeX, 3 png figures; v3: fixed typos, added references and more comments; final version, accepted in JCAP

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:43:25.001Z