English

Evolving Dark Energy or Evolving Dark Matter?

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-07-22 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We show that the latest empirical constraints on cosmology, from a combination of DESI, CMB and supernova data, can be accounted for if a small component of dark matter has an evolving and oscillating equation of state within 1<w<1-1<w<1. From a fundamental physics perspective, this interpretation is more appealing than an evolving phantom dark energy with w<1w<-1, which violates the null energy condition.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.02645,
  title  = {Evolving Dark Energy or Evolving Dark Matter?},
  author = {Xingang Chen and Abraham Loeb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.02645},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

v2: 21 pages; discussions in Sec.4 and Sec.5 extended, and other minor revisions

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:21:29.517Z