Abstract
The current concordance model of cosmology is dominated by two mysterious ingredients: dark matter and dark energy. In this paper, we explore the possibility that, in fact, there exist two dark-energy components: the cosmological constant Λ, with equation-of-state parameter wΛ=−1, and a 'missing matter' component X with wX=−2/3, which we introduce here to allow the evolution of the universal scale factor as a function of conformal time to exhibit a symmetry that relates the big bang to the future conformal singularity, such as in Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology. Using recent cosmological observations, we constrain the present-day energy density of missing matter to be ΩX,0=−0.034 ± 0.075. This is consistent with the standard ΛCDM model, but constraints on the energy densities of all the components are considerably broadened by the introduction of missing matter; significant relative probability exists even for ΩX,0 ∼ 0.1, and so the presence of a missing matter component cannot be ruled out. As a result, a Bayesian model selection analysis only slightly disfavours its introduction by 1.1 log-units of evidence. Foregoing our symmetry requirement on the conformal time evolution of the universe, we extend our analysis by allowing wX to be a free parameter. For this more generic 'double dark energy' model, we find wX = −1.01 ± 0.16 and ΩX,0 = −0.10 ± 0.56, which is again consistent with the standard ΛCDM model, although once more the posterior distributions are sufficiently broad that the existence of a second dark-energy component cannot be ruled out. The model including the second dark energy component also has an equivalent Bayesian evidence to ΛCDM, within the estimation error, and is indistuingishable according to the Jeffreys guideline.
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