Large-scale (in-) stability Analysis of an Exactly Solved Coupled Dark-Energy Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability and observational constraints of a coupled dark energy model with non-gravitational interactions, analyzing its background evolution, perturbations, and comparing it with the standard $\\Lambda$CDM cosmology.

Contribution

It provides an exact analytic solution for the background evolution of a coupled dark energy model with constant $w_x$, and assesses its stability and observational viability.

Findings

Small interaction strength is consistent with data, with $\\Lambda$CDM favored.

Interacting models with $w_x < -1$ can partially alleviate $H_0$ tension.

Large coupling significantly impacts large-scale universe dynamics.

Abstract

Assuming a non-gravitational interaction amongst the dark fluids of our universe namely, the dark matter and dark energy, we study a specific interaction model in the background of a spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker geometry. The interaction model, as we found, solves the background evolution in an analytic way when the dark energy takes a constant barotropic equation of state, $w_x$. In particular, we analyze two separate interaction scenarios, namely, when the dark energy is a fluid other than the vacuum energy (i.e., $w_x \neq -1$) and when it is vacuum energy itself (i.e., $w_x = -1$). We found that the interacting model with $w_x \neq -1$ produces stable perturbation at large scales for $w_x < -1$ with the coupling strength $\xi<0$. Both the scenarios have been constrained with the latest astronomical data having distinct origin. The analyses show that a very small interaction with coupling strength is allowed and within 68.3\% confidence-region, $\xi =0$ is recovered. The analyses further show that a large coupling strength significantly affects the large scale dynamics of the universe while according to the observational data the interaction models are very well consistent with the $\Lambda$-cosmology. Furthermore, we observe that for the vacuum interaction scenario, the tension on $H_0$ is not released while for the interacting dark energy scenario with $w_x < -1$, the tension on $H_0$ seems to be released partially because of the high error bars in $H_0$. Finally, we close the work with the Bayesian evidence which shows that the $\Lambda$CDM cosmology is favored over the two interacting scenarios.