Reconstructing the dark matter and dark energy interaction scenarios from observations

TL;DR

This paper reconstructs interaction scenarios between dark matter and dark energy using cosmological data, finding that non-interacting models fit observations well but allowing for small interactions, especially linear ones, cannot be ruled out.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible parametrization of dark matter-dark energy interaction and reconstructs the universe's expansion history, providing constraints on interaction parameters from observational data.

Findings

Non-interacting models are consistent with observations.

Higher-order interaction terms are constrained to be nearly zero.

Linear interaction parametrization effectively describes the data.

Abstract

We consider a class of interacting dark energy models in a flat and nonflat FLRW universe where the interaction is characterized by the modified evolution of the pressureless dark matter as $a^{-3+\delta (a)}$, $a$ being the FLRW scale factor and $\delta (a)$ quantifies the interaction rate. By assuming the most natural and nonsingular parametrization for $\delta (a)$ as $\delta \left( a\right) =\sum_{i} \delta_i (1-a)^i $, where $\delta _{i}$'s ($i=0,1,2,3,..$) are constants, we reconstruct the expansion history of the universe for three particular choices of the DE sector using different cosmological datasets. Our analyses show that the non-interacting scenario is consistent with the observations while the interaction is not strictly ruled out. We reconstruct in the following way. We start with the first two terms of $\delta (a)$ above and constrain $\delta_0$, $\delta_1$. Then we consider up to the second order terms in $\delta (a)$ but fix $\delta_0$, $\delta_1$ to their constrained values and constrain $\delta_2$; similarly we constrain $\delta_3$, and finally we constrain $(\delta_0, \delta_1, \delta_1, \delta_3)$ by keeping all of them to be free as a generalized case. Our reconstruction technique shows that the constraints on $\delta_2$ (fixing $\delta_0$ and $\delta_1$) and $\delta_3$ (fixing $\delta_0$, $\delta_1$ and $\delta_2$) are almost zero for any interaction model and thus the effective scenario is well described by the linear parametrization $\delta (a)\simeq \delta_{0}+\delta _{1}(1-a)$. Additionally, a strong negative correlation between $\delta_0$, $\delta_1$ is observed independently of the dark energy fluid and the curvature of our universe.