Tests of equivalence principle violation in doubly coupled dark energy
Abstract
Recent work has shown that a simple form of coupled dark energy with a constant coupling produces a good fit to the DESI data. In this scenario, dark matter, but not baryons, couples to a scalar field, thereby violating the weak equivalence principle (EP). We first generalize the coupled dark energy model by adding a nonminimal coupling between the scalar field and gravity, and dub the resulting model "doubly coupled dark energy". We then construct a parameter EP in this model that quantifies EP violation on cosmological scales and can be measured with large galaxy surveys in a model-independent way. Finally, we forecast constraints on the couplings for present and future spectroscopic galaxy surveys, namely DESI, Euclid, and SKA Phase 2 (SKA2). To keep the analysis as general as possible, we leave the initial power spectrum shape and the galaxy bias free to vary in several bins. Among these surveys, SKA2 could provide the tightest constraint on the coupling strength in the coupled dark energy scenario, with a relative 1σ uncertainty of 22%. The constraints weaken when both couplings are varied, but can be further improved by increasing the number of galaxies detected.
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BibTeX
@misc{kegel2026tests,
title = {{Tests of equivalence principle violation in doubly coupled dark energy}},
author = {Yannick Kegel and Ziyang Zheng and Luca Amendola},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.42056},
eprint = {2610.42056},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.42056},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tests of equivalence principle violation in doubly coupled dark energy
AU - Yannick Kegel
AU - Ziyang Zheng
AU - Luca Amendola
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.42056
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.42056
AB - Recent work has shown that a simple form of coupled dark energy with a constant coupling produces a good fit to the DESI data. In this scenario, dark matter, but not baryons, couples to a scalar field, thereby violating the weak equivalence principle (EP). We first generalize the coupled dark energy model by adding a nonminimal coupling between the scalar field and gravity, and dub the resulting model "doubly coupled dark energy". We then construct a parameter E_P in this model that quantifies EP violation on cosmological scales and can be measured with large galaxy surveys in a model-independent way. Finally, we forecast constraints on the couplings for present and future spectroscopic galaxy surveys, namely DESI, Euclid, and SKA Phase 2 (SKA2). To keep the analysis as general as possible, we leave the initial power spectrum shape and the galaxy bias free to vary in several bins. Among these surveys, SKA2 could provide the tightest constraint on the coupling strength in the coupled dark energy scenario, with a relative 1σ uncertainty of 22%. The constraints weaken when both couplings are varied, but can be further improved by increasing the number of galaxies detected.
ER -