Interacting Dark Energy after DESI Baryon Acoustic Oscillation measurements

We investigate the implications of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations measurement released by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) for Interacting Dark Energy (IDE) models characterized by an energy-momentum flow from Dark Matter to Dark Energy. By combining Planck-2018 and DESI data, we observe a preference for interactions, leading to a non-vanishing interaction rate $\xi=-0.32^{+0.18}_{-0.14}$, which results in a present-day expansion rate $H_0=70.8^{+1.4}_{-1.7}$ km/s/Mpc, reducing the tension with the value provided by the SH0ES collaboration to less than $\sim 1.3 \sigma$. The preference for interactions remains robust when including measurements of the expansion rate $H(z)$ obtained from the relative ages of massive, early-time, and passively-evolving galaxies, as well as when considering distance moduli measurements from Type-Ia Supernovae sourced from the Pantheon-plus catalog using the SH0ES Cepheid host distances as calibrators. Overall, the IDE framework provides an equally good, or better, explanation of both high- and low-redshift background observations compared to $\Lambda$CDM, while also yielding higher $H_0$ values that align more closely with the local distance ladder estimates. However, a limitation of the IDE model is that it predicts lower $\Omega_{m}$ and higher $\sigma_{8}$ values, which may not be fully consistent with large-scale structure data at the perturbation level.