Higher-order coupled quintessence

TL;DR

This paper investigates a coupled quintessence dark energy model where the interaction depends on the potential, demonstrating a late-time accelerated universe and fitting observational data to constrain the model.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupling mechanism based on the quintessence potential and analyzes its dynamical behavior and observational constraints.

Findings

The model exhibits a late-time accelerated attractor.

Observational data constrains the coupling parameters.

Weak equivalence principle considerations are discussed.

Abstract

We study a coupled quintessence model in which the interaction with the dark matter sector is a function of the quintessence potential. Such a coupling can arise from a field dependent mass term for the dark matter field. The dynamical analysis of a standard quintessence potential coupled with the interaction explored here shows that the system possesses a late time accelerated attractor. In light of these results, we perform a fit to the most recent Supernovae Ia, Cosmic Microwave Background and Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data sets. Constraints arising from weak equivalence principle violation arguments are also discussed.