Number Counts and Dynamical Vacuum Cosmologies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a specific interacting dark energy model affects the formation of large-scale structures, predicting an increased number of massive clusters compared to standard cosmology, which can be tested observationally.

Contribution

It derives the mass function and cluster number density for a dark energy decay model, highlighting differences from the standard $\\Lambda$CDM that can be empirically tested.

Findings

Increased number of large-mass clusters in the interacting model

Derived expressions for mass function and cluster counts

Potential observational signatures to distinguish models

Abstract

We study non-linear structure formation in an interacting model of the dark sector of the Universe in which the dark energy density decays linearly with the Hubble parameter, $\rho_{\Lambda} \propto H$, leading to a constant-rate creation of cold dark matter. We derive all relevant expressions to calculate the mass function and the cluster number density using the Sheth-Torman formalism and show that the effect of the interaction process is to increase the number of bound structures of large masses ($M \gtrsim 10^{14} M_{\odot}h^{-1}$) when compared to the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. Since these models are not reducible to each other, this number counts signature can in principle be tested in future surveys.