DESI and Dynamical Dark Energy from Extended Pre-geometric Gravity
We consider the simplest quadratic extension of MacDowell--Mansouri pre-geometric gravity that preserves the topological pre-volume-form symmetry. Upon symmetry breaking, the theory reduces to $(\mathrm{Lovelock})^2$ gravity and admits a Galileon-like Horndeski scalar-tensor representation. The gravitational Higgs mechanism relates the Gauss--Bonnet coupling to the bare cosmological constant, while the quadratic correction elevates the gravitational $θ$-angle to a dynamical gravi-axion whose ultra-light mass scale can drive late-time acceleration. We confront the Jordan-frame background with DESI DR2 baryon-acoustic-oscillation measurements and an auxiliary six-point compressed growth diagnostic. A transient dark-energy response localized near $H\simeq m_b$ ($m_b$ the effective gravi-axion mass) reproduces the fitted expansion and its BAO-distance predictions and becomes negligible at high redshift. For the full linear calculation, we combine a smooth positive-density representative of this response class with explicitly imposed GR-like tensor and local sectors, together with the parameterized post-Friedmann prescription. The resulting gravi-axion benchmark exhibits a transient effective phantom crossing and admits a regular full linear CAMB evolution. Its separate likelihood contributions are promising relative to those obtained from the flat-$Λ$CDM baseline for the same data set. These results establish the dynamical gravi-axion framework, dual to MacDowell--Mansouri pre-geometric gravity, as a viable effective quantum-gravity inspired description of late-time cosmology, motivating further investigation into its fundamental origin and perturbative consistency.