The 3.5 keV Line from Stringy Axions

Understand

An interesting result in particle astrophysics is the recent detection of an unexplained 3.5 keV line from galaxy clusters.

• A promising model, which can explain the morphology of the signal and its non-observation in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, involves a 7 keV dark matter particle decaying into a pair of ultra-light axions that convert into photons in the magnetic field of the clusters.
• Given that light axions emerge naturally in 4D string vacua, in this paper we present a microscopic realisation of this model within the framework of type IIB flux compactifications.
• Dark matter is a local closed string axion which develops a tiny mass due to subdominant poly-instanton corrections to the superpotential and couples via kinetic mixing to an almost massless open string axion living on a D3-brane at a singularity.