
Constraints on Late Time Violations of the Equivalence Principle in the Dark Sector
Cameron C. Thomas and Carsten van de Bruck
Consortium for Fundamental Physics, School of Mathematics and Statistics,
University of Sheffield, Hounsfield Road, Sheffield S3 7RH, United Kingdom
(Dated: November 17, 2022)
If dark energy is dynamical due to the evolution of a scalar field, then in general it is expected
that the scalar is coupled to matter. While couplings to the standard model particles are highly
constrained by local experiments, bounds on couplings to dark matter (DM) are only obtained
from cosmological observations and they are consequently weaker. It has recently been pointed
out that the coupling itself can become non-zero only at the time of dark energy domination, due
to the evolution of dark energy itself, leading to a violation of the equivalence principle (EP) in
the dark sector at late times. In this paper we study a specific model and show that such late-
time violations of the EP in the DM sector are not strongly constrained by the evolution of the
cosmological background and by observables in the linear regime (e.g. from the cosmic microwave
background radiation). A study of perturbations in non-linear regime is necessary to constrain
late–time violations of the equivalence principle much more strongly.
I. INTRODUCTION
There are several reasons to study alternative theories to
the cosmological constant as a model for dark energy (DE).
Firstly, if DE is due to a non-vanishing cosmological con-
stant, its value has to be very small to fit the data. The
expected theoretical value, however, is much larger. This
problem has not been solved, but there are attempts to ad-
dress this problem (see [1–3] and references therein). Sec-
ondly, there are several tensions between data sets, provid-
ing tantalising hints that the standard model of cosmology,
the Λ-Cold-Dark-Matter(ΛCDM) model, may be in need
of corrections (we refer to [4] for a recent overview over
the tensions and [5] for an overview of attempts to solve
the tensions). Among the extensions of the ΛCDM model
which remain the best motivated ones are scalar-field mod-
els of DE, in which the accelerated expansion is driven by a
scalar field [6–8]. It is expected that, in general, the scalar
is coupled to at least one species of matter, unless there is
a symmetry which forbids such couplings [9]. Such a cou-
pling results in an additional force mediated between the
coupled species. Since the interaction between DE and or-
dinary matter is strongly constrained, in some models only
the coupling to cold dark matter (CDM) is of cosmological
significance (see e.g.[10–14] and references therein). It is
this type of theory which we consider in this paper.
It has recently been suggested, that the potential energy
of scalar fields appearing in string theory cannot be arbi-
trarily flat [15,16], see [17] for an overview of the swamp-
land programme. If true, the accelerated expansion cannot
be driven by a cosmological constant (de Sitter space is
not realised in string theory) and the equation of state of
dark energy is not constant and deviates potentially sig-
nificantly from the value expected in the ΛCDM model.
Additionally, a coupling of the scalar to some sectors in
the theory are expected. Based on these observations, sev-
eral phenomenological models have been proposed recently
[18–23]. In this paper we study specific a model in which
the coupling function between the dark energy field and
dark matter has a minimum [18]. As a result of the mini-
mum, the coupling switches on only at late times, at the
beginning of the dark energy dominated epoch. One of
our main results of this paper is that the regime in which
linear perturbation theory is valid does not constrain the
parameter of the model greatly. In other words, late time
violations of the equivalence principle in the dark sector
are not strongly constrained by studying the background
evolution or CMB anisotropies. Instead, to obtain stronger
constraints a study of the non-linear regime in considerable
detail is needed.
The paper is organised as follows. In Section II we
present the model and its parameter. In Section III we
describe our methodology, describe the data sets used and
present the constraints on the model. We conclude in Sec-
tion IV.
II. INTERACTING DARK ENERGY
The model we consider consists of the gravitational sec-
tor described by the Einstein–Hilbert action without cos-
mological constant, a part which describes the standard
model (SM) particles and a part for DE described by a
scalar field φwith potential energy V(φ). Finally, the in-
teraction between DE and DM is described by a conformal
coupling. The full action reads
S=Zd4x√−gM2
Pl
2R − 1
2gµν ∂µφ∂νφ−V(φ)
+Zd4x√−gLSM(g, Ψi) + Zd4xp−˜gLDM(˜g, χ) (1)
where MPl is the reduced Planck mass, Ris the Ricci–
scalar, the SM fields are denoted by Ψiand χis the DM
field (assuming here for simplicity that dark matter con-
sists of only one species). The metrics gand ˜gare related
by a conformal transformation ˜gµν =C(φ)gµν . Such the-
ories have been discussed in considerable length in the lit-
erature, but the new ingredient in this paper is that the
arXiv:2210.09732v2 [hep-th] 16 Nov 2022