Stepped partially acoustic dark matter, large scale structure, and the Hubble tension

We propose a new interacting dark sector model, Stepped Partially Acoustic Dark Matter (SPartAcous), that can simultaneously address the two most important tensions in current cosmological data, the H-0 and S-8 problems. As in the Partially Acoustic Dark Matter (PAcDM) scenario, this model features a subcomponent of dark matter that interacts with dark radiation at high temperatures, suppressing the growth of structure at small scales and thereby addressing the S-8 problem. However, in the SPartAcous model, the dark radiation includes a component with a light mass that becomes non-relativistic close to the time of matter-radiation equality. As this light component annihilates away, the remaining dark radiation heats up and its interactions with dark matter decouple. The heating up of the dark sector results in a step-like increase in the relative energy density in dark radiation, significantly reducing the H-0 tension, while the decoupling of dark matter and dark radiation ensures that the power spectrum at larger scales is identical to ?CDM.

Automated summary

We propose a new interacting dark sector model, Stepped Partially Acoustic Dark Matter (SPartAcous), that can simultaneously address the two most important tensions in current cosmological data, the H-0 and S-8 problems. This model features a subcomponent of dark matter that interacts with dark radiation at high temperatures, suppressing the growth of structure at small scales and thereby addressing the S-8 problem. The heating up of the dark sector results in a step-like increase in the relative energy density in dark radiation, significantly reducing the H-0 tension, while the decoupling of dark matter and dark radiation ensures that the power spectrum at larger scales is identical to ΛCDM.