Constraining the Dark Matter Vacuum Energy Interaction Using the EDGES 21 cm Absorption Signal

Abstract

The recent measurement of the global 21 cm absorption signal reported by the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) Collaboration is in tension with the prediction of the ΛCDM model at a 3.8 σ significance level. In this work, we report that this tension can be released by introducing an interaction between dark matter and vacuum energy. We perform a model parameter estimation using a combined data set including EDGES and other recent cosmological observations, and find that the EDGES measurement can marginally improve the constraint on parameters that quantify the interacting vacuum, and that the combined data set favors the ΛCDM at a 68% confidence level. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the potential power of future 21 cm experiments to constrain the interacting dark energy models.