Torsion in string-inspired cosmologies and the universe dark sector

TL;DR

This paper explores how torsion and axion fields in string-inspired cosmologies can induce inflation, contribute to dark matter, and potentially resolve current cosmological data tensions, offering a unified framework without fundamental inflaton fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism linking torsion-induced axions to inflation and dark matter within string-inspired models, emphasizing the role of gravitational anomalies and the Green-Schwarz mechanism.

Findings

Primordial gravitational anomalies can induce inflation without inflatons.

Stringy axions may acquire mass post-inflation, acting as dark matter.

Model potentially alleviates tensions in current cosmological observations.

Abstract

I review several aspects of torsion in string-inspired cosmologies. In particular, I discuss its connection with fundamental, string-model independent, axion fields associated with the massless gravitational multiplet of the string. I argue in favour of the role of primordial gravitational anomalies coupled to such axions in inducing inflation of a type encountered in the "running-vacuum-model (RVM)" cosmological framework, without fundamental inflaton fields. The gravitational-anomaly terms owe their existence to the Green-Schwarz mechanism for the (extra-dimensional) anomaly cancellation, and may be non-trivial in such theories in the presence of (primordial) gravitational waves at early stages of the four-dimensional string Universe (after compactification). I also discuss how the torsion-induced stringy axions can acquire a mass in the post inflationary era, due to non perturbative effects, thus having the potential to play the r\^ole of (a component of) dark matter in such models. Finally, I describe briefly the current-era phenomenology of this model, with the emphasis placed on the possibility of alleviating tensions observed in the current-era cosmological data. A brief phenomenological comparison with other cosmological models in contorted geometries is also made.