Constraints on prerecombination early dark energy from SPT-3G public data

Abstract

Early dark energy (EDE) is a proposed solution to the Hubble tension in which a new cosmological field accelerates cosmic expansion prior to recombination and reduces the physical size of the sound horizon. In previous work, a slight preference for a nonzero EDE contribution was found in the latest Atacama Cosmology Telescope data (ACT DR4), while the Planck satellite legacy data alone do not show evidence for it. In this work, we use the most recent public data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT-3G) to constrain the parameters of the EDE scenario. We find that at the current precision level of SPT-3G, an EDE contribution to the total energy density of the universe prior to recombination of $\ensuremath{\sim}10%$ cannot be ruled out, but that the data are also consistent with no EDE. The combination of ACT DR4 and SPT-3G with the Planck large-scale temperature anisotropy measurement shows a hint ($2.6\ensuremath{\sigma}$) for nonzero EDE; however, this preference disappears when the full Planck 2018 dataset is included.