A Natural Dark Matter-Dark Energy Interaction from Axion-Monopole Dynamics
Abstract
We propose a natural framework for interacting dark matter and dark energy based on axion-monopole dynamics in a dark gauge sector. Dark matter is composed of dark 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles, while dark energy is an ultralight axion whose coupling to the dark gauge field induces an axion-dependent dyon mass through the Witten effect. This generates a direct dark matter-dark energy interaction. We show that generic models with a significant dark matter-dark energy coupling suffer from a naturalness problem: the Coleman-Weinberg potential induced by the interaction is typically much larger than the dark energy scale. In our model, the corrections arise from a monodromy tower of dyon states, allowing them to be exponentially suppressed. In the minimal setup, the interaction strength is predicted to be ∼ 0.1%, below the sensitivity of current observations. We discuss scenarios in which cosmological population of higher-charge dyons can enhance the interaction to the percent level, producing an apparent phantom dark energy equation of state. We further show that the parameter space of the axion-monopole model preferred by fitting the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) results can also naturally explain the cosmic birefringence with a small anomaly coefficient.
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BibTeX
@misc{bagherian2026natural,
title = {{A Natural Dark Matter-Dark Energy Interaction from Axion-Monopole Dynamics}},
author = {Hengameh Bagherian and Matthew Reece and Lian-Tao Wang and Huangyu Xiao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.27059},
eprint = {2610.27059},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27059},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Natural Dark Matter-Dark Energy Interaction from Axion-Monopole Dynamics
AU - Hengameh Bagherian
AU - Matthew Reece
AU - Lian-Tao Wang
AU - Huangyu Xiao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.27059
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27059
AB - We propose a natural framework for interacting dark matter and dark energy based on axion-monopole dynamics in a dark gauge sector. Dark matter is composed of dark 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles, while dark energy is an ultralight axion whose coupling to the dark gauge field induces an axion-dependent dyon mass through the Witten effect. This generates a direct dark matter-dark energy interaction. We show that generic models with a significant dark matter-dark energy coupling suffer from a naturalness problem: the Coleman-Weinberg potential induced by the interaction is typically much larger than the dark energy scale. In our model, the corrections arise from a monodromy tower of dyon states, allowing them to be exponentially suppressed. In the minimal setup, the interaction strength is predicted to be ∼ 0.1%, below the sensitivity of current observations. We discuss scenarios in which cosmological population of higher-charge dyons can enhance the interaction to the percent level, producing an apparent phantom dark energy equation of state. We further show that the parameter space of the axion-monopole model preferred by fitting the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) results can also naturally explain the cosmic birefringence with a small anomaly coefficient.
ER -