The CIDER simulations: non-linear structure formation in the constrained interacting dark energy scenario

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe present for the first time a suite of cosmological simulations for a particular class of interacting Dark Energy cosmologies characterized by a background expansion history constrained to be indistinguishable from ΛCDM. Such Constrained Interacting Dark Energy scenario – or CIDER – has been recently proposed in the literature and has the appealing feature of suppressing structure formation at late times, thereby possibly alleviating the persisting σ8 tension while leaving background observables unaffected. A crucial step to assess the viability of such scenarios is then represented by quantifying their impact on structure formation at non-linear scales, which is what we start investigating with the simulations discussed in the present work. We show that – for reasonable parameter choices – the reconstructed scalar potential is close to an exponential for most of the matter dominated epoch, and that the non-linear evolution of structures in these models imprints specific footprints on matter and halo statistics that may allow to break degeneracies with standard cosmological parameters.