We consider the cosmological constraints on theories in which there exists a nontrivial coupling between the dark matter sector and the sector responsible for the acceleration of the universe, in light of the most recent supernovae, large scale struc
ture and cosmic microwave background data. For a variety of models, we show that the strength of the coupling of dark matter to a quintessence field is constrained to be less than 7% of the coupling to gravity. We also show that long range interactions between fermionic dark matter particles mediated by a light scalar with a Yukawa coupling are constrained to be less than 5% of the strength of gravity at a distance scale of 10 Mpc. We show that all of the models we consider are quantum mechanically weakly coupled, and argue that some other models in the literature are ruled out by quantum mechanical strong coupling.
If inflation is to be considered in an unbiased way, as possibly originating from one of a wide range of underlying theories, then observations need not be simply applied to reconstructing the inflaton potential, V(phi), or a specific kinetic term, a
s in DBI inflation, but rather to reconstruct the inflationary action in its entirety. We discuss the constraints that can be placed on a general single field action from measurements of the primordial scalar and tensor fluctuation power spectra and non-Gaussianities. We also present the flow equation formalism for reconstructing a general inflationary Lagrangian, L(X,phi), with X={1/2}partial_muphipartial^muphi, in a general gauge, that reduces to canonical and DBI inflation in the specific gauge partial L/partial X = c_s^{-1}.
