A low-$z$ test for interacting dark energy

Abstract

A non-minimal coupling between the dark matter and dark energy components may offer a way of solving the so-called coincidence problem. In this paper we propose a low-$z$ test for such hypothesis using measurements of the gas mass fraction $f_{\mathrm{gas}}$ in relaxed and massive galaxy clusters. The test applies to any model whose dilution of dark matter is modified with respect to the standard $a^{-3}$ scaling, as usual in interacting models, where $a$ is the cosmological scale factor. We apply the test to current $f_{\mathrm{gas}}$ data and perform Monte Carlo simulations to forecast the necessary improvements in number and accuracy of upcoming observations to detect a possible interaction in the cosmological dark sector. Our results show that improvements in the present relative error ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{gas}}/f_{\mathrm{gas}}$ are more effective to achieve this goal than an increase in the size of the $f_{\mathrm{gas}}$ sample.

5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Dynamics of interacting dark energy
• Cosmologies with Energy Exchange
• Le Chatelier-Braun principle in cosmological physics
• X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Measurements of the Gas Mass Fraction in Galaxy Clusters
• Coupled quintessence and vacuum decay

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Looking for interactions in the cosmological dark sector
• Cosmological constraints on coupled dark energy
• Screened Fifth Forces Mediated by Dark Matter-Baryon Interactions: Theory and Astrophysical Probes
• Dynamical system analysis of interacting models
• Cosmological models with running cosmological term and decaying dark matter
• Dynamics of expansion of the Universe in the models with non-minimally coupled dark energy
• The cosmological dark sector as a scalar $\sigma$-meson field