Field theoretic interpretations of interacting dark energy scenarios and recent observations

Abstract

Cosmological models describing the non-gravitational interaction between dark matter and dark energy are based on some phenomenological choices of the interaction rates between dark matter and dark energy. There is no such guiding rule to select such rates of interaction. {\it In the present work we show that various phenomenological models of the interaction rates might have a strong field theoretical ground.} We explicitly derive several well known interaction functions between dark matter and dark energy under some special conditions and finally constrain them using the latest cosmic microwave background observations from final Planck legacy release together with baryon acoustic oscillations distance measurements. Our analyses report that one of the interacting functions is able to alleviate the $H_0$ tension. We also perform a Bayesian evidence analyses for all the models with reference to the $\Lambda$CDM model. From the Bayesian evidence analyses, although the reference scenario is preferred over the interacting scenarios, however, we found that two interacting models are close to the reference $\Lambda$CDM model.