On Observables in a Dark Matter-Clustering Quintessence System

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of clustering quintessence on dark matter observables, analyzing one-loop power spectra and consistency relations, and explores implications for dark energy and modified gravity models.

Contribution

It introduces a reduced one-degree-of-freedom model for dark matter with clustering quintessence and examines its observable predictions, including IR behavior and consistency relations.

Findings

The reduced system's power spectrum resembles non-equal time dark matter correlators.

The one-loop IR cancellation confirms the validity of consistency relations in the reduced model.

Relaxing sound speed assumptions reveals additional effects on observables like the bispectrum.

Abstract

We consider a system where dark matter dynamics is enriched by the presence of clustering quintessence in the approximation where the system is effectively reduced to one degree of freedom. We study the corresponding observables up to one-loop order and then point out similarities between the power spectrum of the reduced system and the behaviour of non-equal time pure dark matter correlators. We then focus on the one-loop total density power spectrum in the IR limit as a diagnostic tool for consistency relations breaking. Unlike the non-equal time case, the reduced system does still obey consistency relations; we illustrate this by explicitly verifying the 1-loop IR cancellation. A more general setup, obtained by relaxing the assumption of a vanishing sound speed, is also analyzed. In this and similar scenarios the presence of additional dynamics, typical of dark energy and modified gravity models, implies that one may no longer gauge away the squeezed contribution of observables such as the dark matter bispectrum. We show how these effects propagate all the way to biased tracers.