Looking for interactions in the cosmological dark sector
We study observational signatures of non-gravitational interactions between the dark components of the cosmic fluid, which can be either due to creation of dark particles from the expanding vacuum or an effect of the clustering of a dynamical dark energy. In particular, we analyse a class of interacting models (Λ(t)CDM), characterised by the parameter α, that behaves at background level like cold matter at early times and tends to a cosmological constant in the asymptotic future. Our analysis improves previous works, where only the position of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) first peak and supernova and LSS data where used, considering for the first time both background and primordial perturbations evolutions of the model. We use full spectra of the CMB Planck data together with late time observations, such as the Joint Light-curve Analysis (JLA) supernovae data, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurement of the local value of the Hubble-Lemaȋtre parameter, and primordial deuterium abundance from Lyα systems to test the observational viability of the model and some of its extensions, adapting an Einstein-Boltzmann solver code for our purpose. We found that there is no preference for values of α different from zero (characterising interaction), even if there are some indications for positive values when the minimal Λ(t)CDM model is analysed. When extra degrees of freedom in the relativistic component of the cosmic fluid are considered, the data favour negative values of α, which means an energy flux from dark energy to dark matter.