English

The Dark Dimension meets the Axiverse

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-07-29 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We explore the cosmological implications of combining dark dimension scenarios with an axiverse. If gauge sectors are realized on branes, towers of Kaluza-Klein (KK) excitations of closed string axions can propagate through the dark dimension in addition to the tower of graviton excitations. This modifies cosmology in two ways. First, if any of these axion towers interact with the standard model (SM) plasma, they can significantly alter the freeze-in production of the cosmological abundance of tower states. Freeze-in to graviton and axion towers can provide all of dark matter (DM) for an axion decay constant in 1012 GeV fa1016 GeV 10^{12} \text{ GeV }\lesssim f_a\lesssim 10^{16}\,\text{ GeV } and reheating temperatures 5 MeV TRHO(1) GeV 5\text{ MeV }\lesssim T_{\rm RH} \lesssim O(1)\,\text{ GeV }. Second, different towers fragment into each other and redistribute energy; each tower's fraction of energy at late times is fixed by their interactions. If there are N1N\gg1 axion towers, the energy visibly injected into the SM by any decaying tower is diluted by a factor of NN. This suppression offers a simple realization of how dark dimension dark matter can avoid strong cosmological constraints which rule out the simplest models. In the process of this exploration we develop a continuum approach to evaluating tower fragmentation which offers insight and aids numerical calculations by reducing the problem to quadrature.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.27314,
  title  = {The Dark Dimension meets the Axiverse},
  author = {Kevin Langhoff and Maria Ramos and Mario Reig},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.27314},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures (main text), 3 appendices