Can Conformal and Disformal Couplings Between Dark Sectors Explain the EDGES 21cm Anomaly?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether conformal and disformal couplings between dark matter and dark energy can explain the EDGES 21cm anomaly, finding that such couplings can partially account for the observed signal but face tensions with other data.

Contribution

It introduces a cosmological model with dark sector couplings and assesses its ability to explain the EDGES 21cm anomaly, highlighting the potential and limitations of this approach.

Findings

Couplings can moderately alter the Hubble parameter.

The model can reproduce the 21cm absorption at z=17.5.

Tensions remain with other cosmological observations.

Abstract

The recently announced result by EDGES points an unexpected excess in the 21 cm global brightness temperature from cosmic dawn at $z\sim 17$, potentially indicating new phenomena beyond the $\Lambda$CDM model. A generic cosmological model which allows conformal and disformal couplings between dark matter and dark energy is employed to investigate the impact on the 21cm absorption signal and understand the EDGES anomaly. After exploring a wide range of parameter space for couplings, we find that the coupling effects can lead to a moderate change in the Hubble parameter while a negligible change in the spin temperature in the early Universe. Consequently, the decrease of the Hubble parameter from the mixed conformal and disformal couplings can reproduce the 21cm absorption approximately in consistent with the EDGES result at $z=17.5$. However, there is still tension in corresponding parameter space between EDGES and other cosmological observations for this model.