• Editors' Suggestion

Early dark energy does not restore cosmological concordance

J. Colin Hill, Evan McDonough, Michael W. Toomey, and Stephon Alexander
Phys. Rev. D 102, 043507 – Published 5 August 2020

Abstract

Current cosmological data exhibit a tension between inferences of the Hubble constant, H0, derived from early and late-Universe measurements. One proposed solution is to introduce a new component in the early Universe, which initially acts as “early dark energy” (EDE), thus decreasing the physical size of the sound horizon imprinted in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and increasing the inferred H0. Previous EDE analyses have shown this model can relax the H0 tension, but the CMB-preferred value of the density fluctuation amplitude, σ8, increases in EDE as compared to Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM), increasing tension with large-scale structure (LSS) data. We show that the EDE model fit to CMB and SH0ES data yields scale-dependent changes in the matter power spectrum compared to ΛCDM, including 10% more power at k=1h/Mpc. Motivated by this observation, we reanalyze the EDE scenario, considering LSS data in detail. We also update previous analyses by including Planck 2018 CMB likelihoods, and perform the first search for EDE in Planck data alone, which yields no evidence for EDE. We consider several data set combinations involving the primary CMB, CMB lensing, supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift-space distortions, weak lensing, galaxy clustering, and local distance-ladder data (SH0ES). While the EDE component is weakly detected (3σ) when including the SH0ES data and excluding most LSS data, this drops below 2σ when further LSS data are included. Further, this result is in tension with strong constraints imposed on EDE by CMB and LSS data without SH0ES, which show no evidence for this model. We also show that physical priors on the fundamental scalar field parameters further weaken evidence for EDE. We conclude that the EDE scenario is, at best, no more likely to be concordant with all current cosmological data sets than ΛCDM, and appears unlikely to resolve the H0 tension.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
17 More
  • Received 8 April 2020
  • Accepted 22 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.102.043507

© 2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

J. Colin Hill1,2, Evan McDonough3,4,*, Michael W. Toomey3, and Stephon Alexander3

  • 1Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
  • 2Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, New York 10010, USA
  • 3Brown Theoretical Physics Center and Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA
  • 4Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

  • *evanmc@mit.edu

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 102, Iss. 4 — 15 August 2020

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review D

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×