No Arabic abstract
We place observational constraints on two models within a class of scenarios featuring an elastic interaction between dark energy and dark matter that only produces momentum exchange up to first order in cosmological perturbations. The first one corresponds to a perfect-fluid model of the dark components with an explicit interacting Lagrangian, where dark energy acts as a dark radiation at early times and behaves as a cosmological constant at late times. The second one is a dynamical dark energy model with a dark radiation component, where the momentum exchange covariantly modifies the conservation equations in the dark sector. Using Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), and Supernovae type Ia (SnIa) data, we show that the Hubble tension can be alleviated due to the additional radiation, while the $sigma_8$ tension present in the $Lambda$-Cold-Dark-Matter model can be eased by the weaker galaxy clustering that occurs in these interacting models. Furthermore, we show that, while CMB+BAO+SnIa data put only upper bounds on the coupling strength, adding low-redshift data in the form of a constraint on the parameter $S_8$ strongly favours nonvanishing values of the interaction parameters. Our findings are in line with other results in the literature that could signal a universal trend of the momentum exchange among the dark sector.
A phenomenological attempt at alleviating the so-called coincidence problem is to allow the dark matter and dark energy to interact. By assuming a coupled quintessence scenario characterized by an interaction parameter $epsilon$, we investigate the precision in the measurements of the expansion rate $H(z)$ required by future experiments in order to detect a possible deviation from the standard $Lambda$CDM model ($epsilon = 0$). We perform our analyses at two levels, namely: through Monte Carlo simulations based on $epsilon$CDM models, in which $H(z)$ samples with different accuracies are generated and through an analytic method that calculates the error propagation of $epsilon$ as a function of the error in $H(z)$. We show that our analytical approach traces simulations accurately and find that to detect an interaction {using $H(z)$ data only, these must reach an accuracy better than 1%.
It is possible that there exist some interactions between dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM), and a suitable interaction can alleviate the coincidence problem. Several phenomenological interacting forms are proposed and are fitted with observations in the literature. In this paper we investigate the possible interaction in a way independent of specific interacting forms by use of observational data (SNe, BAO, CMB and Hubble parameter). We divide the whole range of redshift into a few bins and set the interacting term $delta(z)$ to be a constant in each redshift bin. We consider four parameterizations of the equation of state $w_{de}$ for DE and find that $delta(z)$ is likely to cross the non-interacting ($delta=0$) and have an oscillation form. It suggests that to study the interaction between DE and DM, more general phenomenological forms of the interacting term should be considered.
The $Lambda$CDM prediction of $S_8equivsigma_8(Omega_m/0.3)^{0.5}$ -- where $sigma_8$ is the root mean square of matter fluctuations on a 8 $h^{-1}$Mpc scale -- once calibrated on Planck CMB data is $2-3sigma$ lower than its direct estimate by a number of weak lensing surveys. In this paper, we explore the possibility that the $S_8$-tension is due to a non-thermal hot dark matter (HDM) fractional contribution to the universe energy density leading to a power suppression at small-scales in the matter power spectrum. Any HDM models can be characterized by its effective mass $ m_{sp}^{rm eff}$ and its contribution to the relativistic degrees of freedom at CMB decoupling $Delta N_{rm eff}$. Taking the specific example of a sterile particle produced from the decay of the inflaton during a matter dominated era, we find that from Planck only the tension can be reduced below $2sigma$, but Planck does not favor a non-zero ${m_{sp}^{rm eff},Delta N_{rm eff}}$. In combination with a measurement of $S_8$ from KIDS1000+BOSS+2dfLenS, the $S_8$-tension would hint at the existence of a particle of mass $ m_{sp}^{rm eff} simeq 0.67_{-0.48}^{+0.26}$ ${rm eV}$ with a contribution to $Delta N_{rm eff} simeq0.06pm0.05$. However, Pantheon and BOSS BAO/$fsigma_8$ data restricts the particle mass to $m_{sp}^{rm eff} simeq 0.48_{-0.36}^{+0.17}$ and contribution to $Delta N_{rm eff} simeq 0.046_{-0.031}^{+0.004}$. We discuss implications of our results for other canonical non-thermal HDM models -- the Dodelson-Widrow model and a thermal sterile particle with a different temperature in the hidden sector. We report competitive results on such hidden sector temperature which might have interesting implications for particle physics model building, in particular connecting the $S_8$-tension to the longstanding short baseline oscillation anomaly.
Since there is no known symmetry in Nature that prevents a non-minimal coupling between the dark energy (DE) and cold dark matter (CDM) components, such a possibility constitutes an alternative to standard cosmology, with its theoretical and observational consequences being of great interest. In this paper we propose a new null test on the standard evolution of the dark sector based on the time dependence of the ratio between the CDM and DE energy densities which, in the standard $Lambda$CDM scenario, scales necessarily as $a^{-3}$. We use the latest measurements of type Ia supernovae, cosmic chronometers and angular baryonic acoustic oscillations to reconstruct the expansion history using model-independent Machine Learning techniques, namely, the Linear Model formalism and Gaussian Processes. We find that while the standard evolution is consistent with the data at $3sigma$ level, some deviations from the $Lambda$CDM model are found at low redshifts, which may be associated with the current tension between local and global determinations of $H_0$.
An interaction between dark matter and dark energy, proportional to the product of their energy densities, results in a scaling behavior of the ratio of these densities with respect to the scale factor of the Robertson-Walker metric. This gives rise to a class of cosmological models which deviate from the standard model in an analytically tractable way. In particular, it becomes possible to quantify the role of potential dark-energy perturbations. We investigate the impact of this interaction on the structure formation process. Using the (modified) CAMB code we obtain the CMB spectrum as well as the linear matter power spectrum. It is shown that the strong degeneracy in the parameter space present in the background analysis is considerably reduced by considering textit{Planck} data. Our analysis is compatible with the $Lambda$CDM model at the $2sigma$ confidence level with a slightly preferred direction of the energy flow from dark matter to dark energy.