Cosmological and astrophysical limits on brane fluctuations

Abstract

We consider a general brane-world model parametrized by the brane tension scale f and the branon mass M. For a low tension compared to the fundamental gravitational scale, we calculate the relic branon abundance and its contribution to the cosmological dark matter. We compare this result with the current observational limits on the total and hot dark matter energy densities and derive the corresponding bounds on f and M. Using the nucleosynthesis bounds on the number of relativistic species, we also set a limit on the number of light branons in terms of the brane tension. Finally, we estimate the bounds coming from the energy loss rate in supernovae explosions due to massive branon emission.