Disformally coupled cosmologies arise from Dirac-Born-Infeld actions in Type II string theories, when matter resides on a moving hidden sector D-brane. Since such matter interacts only very weakly with the standard model particles, this scenario can provide a natural origin for the dark sector of the universe with a clear geometrical interpretation: dark energy is identified with the scalar field associated to the D-brane's position as it moves in the internal space, acting as quintessence, while dark matter is identified with the matter living on the D-brane, which can be modelled by a perfect fluid. The coupling functions are determined by the (warped) extra-dimensional geometry, and are thus constrained by the theory. The resulting cosmologies are studied using both dynamical system analysis and numerics. From the dynamical system point of view, one free parameter controls the cosmological dynamics, given by the ratio of the warp factor and the potential energy scales. The disformal coupling allows for new scaling solutions that can describe accelerating cosmologies alleviating the coincidence problem of dark energy. In addition, this scenario may ameliorate the fine-tuning problem of dark energy, whose small value may be attained dynamically, without requiring the mass of the dark energy field to be unnaturally low.

45 pages, 5 figures. Minor corrections, reference added. Matches version to appear in JCAP