Effects of anisotropy in an anisotropic extension of $w$CDM model

Abstract: In this paper, we derive observational constraints on an anisotropic $w$CDM model from observational data including Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs), Cosmic Chronometer (CC), Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), Pantheon Plus (PP) compilation of Type Ia supernovae, and SH0ES Cepheid host distance anchors. We find that anisotropy is of the order $10^{-13}$, and its presence in the $w$CDM model reduces $H_0$ tension by $\sim 2\sigma$ and $\sim 1\sigma$ in the analyses with BAO+CC+BBN+PP and BAO+CC+BBN+PPSH0ES data combinations, respectively. In both analyses, the quintessence form of dark energy is favored at 95\% CL.