A New Approach to the Dark Matter/Dark Energy Puzzle

Abstract

The dilemmas posed by dark matter and dark energy have been with us for decades without a satisfactory resolution. We propose that both DM and DE can be explained by the existence of long-lived topological gravitational vortices that were produced in the quark-gluon epoch of cosmic inflation due to the misalignment of the gravitational and strong forces. This is analogous to the misalignment mechanism proposed for the production of axions in the early universe. The masses of these topological vortices are expected to be on the order of the nucleon mass. Possible means for their detection are discussed.