Can Dark Matter Decay in Dark Energy?

Abstract

We analyze the interaction between Dark Energy and Dark Matter from a thermodynamical perspective. By assuming they have different temperatures, we study the possibility of occurring a decay from Dark Matter into Dark Energy, characterized by a negative parameter $Q$. We find that, if at least one of the fluids has non vanishing chemical potential, for instance ${\mu }_x<0$ and ${\mu }_{dm}=0$ or ${\mu }_x=0$ and ${\mu }_{dm}>0$, the decay is possible, where ${\mu }_x$ and ${\mu }_{dm}$ are the chemical potentials of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, respectively. Using recent cosmological data, we find that, for a fairly simple interaction, the Dark Matter decay is favored with a probability of $\sim 93$ over the Dark Energy decay. This result comes from a likelihood analysis where only background evolution has been considered.

Matches the published version. Section V changed. Formalism and main conclusion unchanged

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Growth of Structure in Interacting Dark Energy Models
• Crossing the phantom divide line in the Holographic dark energy model in a closed universe