2012

Constraints on coupled dark energy using CMB data from WMAP and SPT

Pettorino, Valeria, Amendola, Luca, Baccigalupi, Carlo et al.

Understand

We consider the case of a coupling in the dark cosmological sector, where a dark energy scalar field modifies the gravitational attraction between dark matter particles.

  • We find that the strength of the coupling {\beta} is constrained using current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data, including WMAP7 and SPT, to be less than 0.063 (0.11) at 68% (95%) confidence level.
  • Further, we consider the additional effect of the CMB-lensing amplitude, curvature, effective number of relativistic species and massive neutrinos and show that the bound from current data on {\beta} is already strong enough to be rather stable with respect to any of these variables.
  • The strongest effect is obtained when we allow for massive neutrinos, in which case the bound becomes slightly weaker, {\beta} < 0.084(0.14).

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