Restoring cosmological concordance with axion-like early dark energy and dark matter characterized by a constant equation of state?

Abstract

The Hubble tension persists as a challenge in cosmology. Even early dark energy (EDE) models, initially considered the most promising for alleviating the Hubble tension, fall short of addressing the issue without exacerbating other tensions, such as the S8 tension. Considering that a negative dark matter (DM) equation of state (EoS) parameter is conducive to reduce the value of the σ8 parameter, we extend the axion-like EDE model in this paper by replacing the cold dark matter (CDM) with DM characterized by a constant EoS wdm (referred to as WDM hereafter). We then impose constraints on this axion-like EDE extension model, along with three other models: the axion-like EDE model, ΛWDM, and ΛCDM. These constraints are derived from a comprehensive analysis incorporating data from the Planck 2018 cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, and the Pantheon compilation, as well as a prior on H0 (i.e. H0 = 73.04 ± 1.04, based on the latest local measurement by Riess et al) and a Gaussianized prior on S8 (i.e. S8 = 0.766 ± 0.017, determined through the joint analysis of KID1000+BOSS+2dLenS). We find that although the new model maintains the ability to alleviate the Hubble tension to ∼1.4σ, it still exacerbates the S8 tension to a level similar to that of the axion-like EDE model.