English

Evolving Dark Sector and the Dark Dimension Scenario

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-08-21 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

String theory naturally leads to the expectation that dark energy is not stable, and may be evolving as captured by the Swampland de Sitter conjectures. Moreover, motivated by the distance conjecture, a unification of dark sector has been proposed, where the smallness of dark energy leads to one extra dimension of micron size with dark matter being the Kaluza--Klein graviton excitations in this extra dimension. We consider the natural possibility that the radius of the dark dimension varies as the dark energy decreases, leading to the variation of the dark matter mass. This correlates the decrease of the dark energy with the variation of the dark matter mass as they depend on the variations of a scalar field ϕ\phi controlling the radius of the extra dimension. A simple realization of this idea for small range of ϕ\phi is adequately captured by choosing a potential which is locally of the form V=V0 exp(cϕ)V=V_0\ {\rm exp}(-c\phi) and dark matter mass mDM=m0 exp(cϕ)m_{\rm DM}=m_0\ {\rm exp}(-c' \phi) where the sign of ϕ\phi is chosen such that c0c'\geq 0 while we have two choices for the sign of cc depending on whether the dark dimension expands or shrinks when the dark energy dominates. We find excellent agreement with recent experimental data from DESI DR2 combined with SN measurements (from DES, Union3 or Pantheon+) and reproduces the same significance as CPL parametrization with the added benefit of providing a natural explanation for the apparent phantom behavior (w<1w<-1) reported by DESI and DES based on a physical model. DESI and SN datasets independently favor non-zero values of cc' and cc, respectively, both lying within the expected O(1)\mathcal{O}(1) range suggested by the Swampland criteria. Moreover, our best fit value c0.05±0.01c'\simeq 0.05 \pm 0.01 is remarkably consistent with the experimental upper bound of c0.2c'\lesssim 0.2 demanded by the lack of detection of fifth force in the dark sector.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.03090,
  title  = {Evolving Dark Sector and the Dark Dimension Scenario},
  author = {Alek Bedroya and Georges Obied and Cumrun Vafa and David H. Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.03090},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

13 pages, 7 figures; v2: minor edits, added refs, added supplementary materials studying simple variations of the original model (22 pages, 15 figures)

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:45:50.552Z