Brane-world dark matter

Abstract

We show that, in the context of brane-world scenarios with low tension [tau]=f^4, massive brane fluctuations (branons) are natural dark matter candidates. We calculate the present abundances for both hot (warm) and cold branons in terms of the branon mass M and the tension scale f. The results are compared with the current experimental bounds on these parameters. We also study the prospects for their detection in direct search experiments and comment on their characteristic signals in the indirect ones.