English

Observational constraints on 3-forms dark energy

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-12-22 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

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-zz 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 67.89±0.36km/s/Mpc67.89\pm0.36{\rm km/s/Mpc} of Λ\LambdaCDM model to 68.290.61+0.56km/s/Mpc68.29^{+0.56}_{-0.61}{\rm km/s/Mpc} 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.

Keywords

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

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:19:26.655Z