Observational constraints on 3-forms dark energy
Abstract
3-forms are natural candidates for describing the late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe, as they can inherently reproduce a positive cosmological constant when lacking an evolving potential. When such a potential is present, a 3-form field may exhibit either quintessence-like or phantom-like behaviour. In this paper, we consider a 3-form model with a Gaussian potential, which features stable, ghost-free phantom-like behaviour within its convergence region and leads to an LSBR late-time attractor. We constrain this model observationally by performing a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis employing a comprehensive cosmological dataset, including Planck PR4 cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, DESI DR1 baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements, Pantheon+ Type Ia supernovae data, low- Cepheid calibrators, and DES Y1 large-scale structure observations. We demonstrate that the 3-form model successfully increases the predicted Hubble parameter of CMB and BAO data from of CDM model to without fine-tuning of the model parameters, thus reducing the tension with the late-time observation. Furthermore, we verify the sub-dominance of the 3-form field perturbation via both analytical and numerical analyses. Thus, the 3-form field does serve as a promising candidate of phantom-like dark energy from both theoretical and observational points of view.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.09991,
title = {Observational constraints on 3-forms dark energy},
author = {Mariam Bouhmadi-López and Hsu-Wen Chiang and Carlos G. Boiza and Pisin Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.09991},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
34 pages, 7 figures and 7 tables