Abstract
We propose a new interacting dark sector model, Stepped Partially Acoustic Dark Matter (SPartAcous), that can simultaneously address the two most important tensions in current cosmological data, the H0 and S8 problems. As in the Partially Acoustic Dark Matter (PAcDM) scenario, this model features a subcomponent of dark matter that interacts with dark radiation at high temperatures, suppressing the growth of structure at small scales and thereby addressing the S8 problem. However, in the SPartAcous model, the dark radiation includes a component with a light mass that becomes non-relativistic close to the time of matter-radiation equality. As this light component annihilates away, the remaining dark radiation heats up and its interactions with dark matter decouple. The heating up of the dark sector results in a step-like increase in the relative energy density in dark radiation, significantly reducing the H0 tension, while the decoupling of dark matter and dark radiation ensures that the power spectrum at larger scales is identical to ΛCDM.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Martin Schmaltz and Melissa Joseph for useful discussions. MBA thanks Stephanie Buen Abad for reviewing this manuscript. MBA, ZC and GMT are supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number PHY-1914731. ZC and GMT are also supported in part by the US-Israeli BSF Grant 2018236. The research of CK and TY is supported by the National Science Foundation Grant Number PHY-1914679.
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Buen-Abad, M.A., Chacko, Z., Kilic, C. et al. Stepped partially acoustic dark matter, large scale structure, and the Hubble tension. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 12 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)012
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)012