2024/04/23 by Allali, Itamar J., Notari, Alessio, Rompineve, Fabrizio · 3 citations
#Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.15220
We investigate the presence of extra relativistic degrees of freedom in the early Universe, contributing to the effective number of neutrinos Neff, as ΔNeff≡ Neff-3.044≥ 0, in light of the recent measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) by the DESI collaboration. We analyze one-parameter extensions of the ΛCDM model where dark radiation (DR) is free streaming or behaves as a perfect fluid, due to self-interactions. We report a significant relaxation of upper bounds on ΔNeff, with respect to previous BAO data from SDSS+6dFGS, when additionally employing Planck data (and supernovae data from Pantheon+), setting ΔNeff≤ 0.39 (95% C.L.) for free streaming DR, and a very mild preference for fluid DR, ΔNeff = 0.221+0.088-0.18 (≤ 0.46, 95% C.L.). Applying constraints from primordial element abundances leads to slightly tighter constraints on ΔNeff, but they are avoided if DR is produced after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). For fluid DR we estimate the tension with the SH0ES determination of H0 to be less than 3σ and as low as 2σ, and for free-streaming DR the tension is below 3σ if production occurs after BBN. This lesser degree of tension motivates a combination with SH0ES in these cases, resulting in a 4.4σ-5σ evidence for dark radiation with ΔNeff≃ 0.6 and large improvements in χ2 over ΛCDM, -18\lesssim Δχ2\lesssim -25. Upcoming data releases by DESI and other CMB and LSS surveys will decisively confirm or disfavour this conclusion.