Interacting Dark Energy: Possible Explanation for 21-cm Absorption at Cosmic Dawn

TL;DR

This paper proposes that interactions between dark energy and dark matter could explain the observed excess in 21-cm brightness temperature during cosmic dawn, offering an alternative to standard models.

Contribution

It introduces a specific interacting dark energy model to explain the 21-cm absorption anomaly observed at cosmic dawn.

Findings

Interacting dark energy can account for the 21-cm brightness temperature excess.

The model demonstrates explicit effects of dark sector interaction on cosmic dawn signals.

Provides a new perspective on dark sector physics influencing early universe observations.

Abstract

A recent observation points to an excess in the expected 21-cm brightness temperature from cosmic dawn. In this paper, we present an alternative explanation of this phenomenon, an interaction in the dark sector. Interacting dark energy models have been extensively studied recently and there is a whole variety of such in the literature. Here we particularize to a specific model in order to make explicit the effect of an interaction.