Hubble tension and gravitational self-interaction

Abstract

One of the most important problems vexing the ΛCDM cosmological model is the Hubble tension. It arises from the fact that measurements of the present value of the Hubble parameter performed with low-redshift quantities, e.g. the Type IA supernova, tend to yield larger values than measurements from quantities originating at high-redshift, e.g. fits of cosmic microwave background radiation. It is becoming likely that the discrepancy, currently standing at 5σ, is not due to systematic errors in the measurements. Here we explore whether the self-interaction of gravitational fields in General Relativity, which are traditionally neglected when studying the evolution of the Universe, can contribute to explaining the tension. We find that with field self-interaction accounted for, both low- and high-redshift data are simultaneously well-fitted, thereby showing that gravitational self-interaction yield consistent H 0 values when inferred from SnIA and cosmic microwave background observations. Crucially, this is achieved without introducing additional parameters.