Geometrical origins of the universe dark sector: string-inspired torsion and anomalies as seeds for inflation and dark matter

In a modest attempt to present potentially new paradigms in cosmology, including its inflationary epoch, and initiate discussions, I review in this article some novel, string-inspired cosmological models, which entail a purely geometrical origin of the dark sector of the Universe but also of its observed matter-antimatter asymmetry. The models contain gravitational (string-model independent, Kalb–Ramond (KR)) axion fields coupled to primordial gravitational anomalies via CP-violating interactions. The anomaly terms are four-space–time-dimensional remnants of the Green–Schwarz counterterms appearing in the definition of the field strength of the spin-one antisymmetric tensor field of the (bosonic) massless gravitational string multiplet, which also plays the role of a totally antisymmetric component of torsion. I show how in such cosmologies the presence of primordial gravitational waves can lead to anomaly condensates and dynamical inflation of a ‘running-vacuum-model’ type, without external inflatons, but also to leptogenesis in the radiation era due to anomaly induced Lorentz and CPT violating KR axion backgrounds. I also discuss how the torsion-related KR-axion could acquire a mass during the QCD epoch, thus playing the role of (a component of) dark matter. Phenomenological considerations of the inflationary and post-inflationary (in particular, modern) eras of the model are briefly discussed, including its potential for alleviating the observed tensions in the cosmological data of the current epoch. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The future of mathematical cosmology, Volume 1’.