No Arabic abstract
New measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe have plunged the standard model of cosmology into a severe crisis. In this letter, we propose a simple resolution to the problem that relies on a first order phase transition in a dark sector in the early Universe, before recombination. This will lead to a short phase of a New Early Dark Energy (NEDE) component and can explain the observations. We model the false vacuum decay of the NEDE scalar field as a sudden transition from a cosmological constant source to a decaying fluid with constant equation of state. The corresponding fluid perturbations are covariantly matched to the adiabatic fluctuations of a sub-dominant scalar field that triggers the phase transition. Fitting our model to measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO, and supernovae (SNe) yields a significant improvement of the best-fit compared with the standard cosmological model without NEDE. We find the mean value of the present Hubble parameter in the NEDE model to be $H_0=71.4 pm 1.0 ~textrm{km}, textrm{s}^{-1}, textrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ ($68, %$ C.L.).
New Early Dark Energy (NEDE) is a component of vacuum energy at the electron volt scale, which decays in a first-order phase transition shortly before recombination [arXiv:1910.10739]. The NEDE component has the potential to resolve the tension between recent local measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe using supernovae (SN) data and the expansion rate inferred from the early Universe through measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) when assuming $Lambda$CDM. We discuss in depth the two-scalar field model of the NEDE phase transition including the process of bubble percolation, collision, and coalescence. We also estimate the gravitational wave signal produced during the collision phase and argue that it can be searched for using pulsar timing arrays. In a second step, we construct an effective cosmological model, which describes the phase transition as an instantaneous process, and derive the covariant equations that match perturbations across the transition surface. Fitting the cosmological model to CMB, baryonic acoustic oscillations and SN data, we report $H_0 = 69.6^{+1.0}_{-1.3} , textrm{km}, textrm{s}^{-1}, textrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ $(68 %$ C.L.) without the local measurement of the Hubble parameter, bringing the tension down to $2.5, sigma$. Including the local input, we find $H_0 = 71.4 pm 1.0 , textrm{km}, textrm{s}^{-1}, textrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ $(68 %$ C.L.) and strong evidence for a non-vanishing NEDE component with a $simeq 4, sigma$ significance.
We study a class of early dark energy models which has substantial amount of dark energy in the early epoch of the universe. We examine the impact of the early dark energy fluctuations on the growth of structure and the CMB power spectrum in the linear approximation. Furthermore we investigate the influence of the interaction between the early dark energy and the dark matter and its effect on the structure growth and CMB. We finally constrain the early dark energy model parameters and the coupling between dark sectors by confronting to different observations.
Recently a full-shape analysis of large-scale structure (LSS) data was employed to provide new constraints on a class of Early Dark Energy (EDE) models. In this note, we derive similar constraints on New Early Dark Energy (NEDE) using the publicly available PyBird code, which makes use of the effective field theory of LSS. We study the NEDE base model with the fraction of NEDE and the trigger field mass as two additional parameters allowed to vary freely while making simplifying assumptions about the decaying fluid sector. Including the full-shape analysis of LSS together with measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) and supernovae (SN) data, we report $ H_0= 71.2 pm 1.0~textrm{km}, textrm{s}^{-1}, textrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ ($68 %$ C.L.) together with a $simeq 4 , sigma$ evidence for a non-vanishing fraction of NEDE. This is an insignificant change to the value previously found without full-shape LSS data, $ H_0= 71.4 pm 1.0~textrm{km}, textrm{s}^{-1}, textrm{Mpc}^{-1} $ ($68 %$ C.L.). As a result, while the NEDE fit cannot be improved upon the inclusion of additional LSS data, it is also not adversely affected by it, making it compatible with current constraints from LSS data. In fact, we find evidence that the effective field theory of LSS acts in favor of NEDE.
The tension between measurements of the Hubble constant obtained at different redshifts may provide a hint of new physics active in the relatively early universe, around the epoch of matter-radiation equality. A leading paradigm to resolve the tension is a period of early dark energy, in which a scalar field contributes a subdominant part of the energy budget of the universe at this time. This scenario faces significant fine-tuning problems which can be ameliorated by a non-trivial coupling of the scalar to the standard model neutrinos. These become non-relativistic close to the time of matter-radiation equality, resulting in an energy injection into the scalar that kick-starts the early dark energy phase, explaining its coincidence with this seemingly unrelated epoch. We present a minimal version of this neutrino-assisted early dark energy model, and perform a detailed analysis of its predictions and theoretical constraints. We consider both particle physics constraints -- that the model constitute a well-behaved effective field theory for which the quantum corrections are under control, so that the relevant predictions are within its regime of validity -- and the constraints provided by requiring a consistent cosmological evolution from early through to late times. Our work paves the way for testing this scenario using cosmological data sets.
Present-day temperature $T_0$ of cosmic microwave background has been precisely measured by the FIRAS experiment. We identify that the early dark energy (EDE) (non-negligible around matter-radiation equality) scenario can remain compatible with the FIRAS result, while lifting the Hubble constant $H_0$. We perform Monte Carlo Markov chain analysis to confirm our observations. We also present an $alpha$-attractor Anti-de Sitter (AdS) model of EDE, in which the AdS depth is consistently varied in the Monte Carlo Markov chain analysis. We found that our datasets weakly hinted the existence of an AdS phase near recombination with $H_0sim 73$km/s/Mpc at 1$sigma$ region in the best-fit model.