Constraints on multicomponent dark energy from cosmological observations

Abstract

Dark energy (DE) plays an important role in the expansion history of our universe. But we only got limited knowledge about its nature and properties after decades of study.In most numerical researches, DE is usually considered as a dynamical whole. Actually, multicomponent DE models can also explain the accelerating expansion of our universe, which is accepted theoretically but lack of numerical researches. We try to study the multicomponent DE models from observation by constructing $w_n$CDM models. The total energy density of DE is separated into $n$ ($n=2,3,5$) parts equally and every part has a constant EOS $w_i$ ($i=1,2...n$). We modify the Friedmann equation and the parameterized post-Friedmann description of DE, then put constraints on $w_i$s from Planck 2018 TT,TE,EE$+$lowE$+$lensing, BAO data and PANTHEON samples. The multicomponent DE models are favoured if any $w_n$CDM model is preferred by observational data and there is no overlap between the highest and lowest values of $w_i$s. We find the data combination supports the $w_n$CDM model when $n$ is small and the $w_2$CDM model is slightly preferred by $\Delta \chi^2_{\text{min}} = \Delta \text{AIC} =\Delta \text{BIC} = -2.48$ over the CPL model, but the largest value of $w_i$ overlaps the smallest one. With larger $n$, the maximum and minimum of $w_i$s do not overlap with each other, but $\chi^2_{\text{min}}$ and AIC also increase. In brief, we find no obvious evidence that DE is composed of different components.