Constraints on Dark Matter-Photon Coupling in the Presence of Time-Varying Dark Energy

Abstract: In a recent work [Phys. Rev. D 98, 043521 (2018)], we have investigated a dark matter (DM)-photon coupling model in which the DM decays into photons in the presence of dark energy (DE) with the constant equation of state (EoS) parameter. Here, we study an extension of the DM-photon coupling model by considering a time-varying EoS of DE via Chevalier-Polarski-Linder (CPL) parametrization. We derive observational constraints on the model parameters by using the data from cosmic microwave background (CMB), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO), the local value of Hubble constant from Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and large scale structure (LSS) information from the abundance of galaxy clusters, in four different combinations. We find that in the present DM-photon coupling scenario the mean values of $w_{\rm de0}$ are in quintessence region ($w_{\rm de0} > -1$) whereas they were in the phantom region ($w_{\rm de0} < -1$) in our previous study with all data combinations. The constraints on the DM-photon coupling parameter do not reflect any significant deviation from the previous results. Due to the decay of DM into photons, we obtain higher values of $H_0$, consistent with the local measurements, similar to our previous study. But, the time-varying DE leads to lower values of $\sigma_8$ in the DM-photon coupling model with all data combinations, in comparison to the results in our previous study. Thus, allowing time-varying DE in the DM-photon coupling scenario is useful to alleviate the $H_0$ and $\sigma_8$ tensions.