Can decaying vacuum solve the tension?

L. S. Brito; J. F. Jesus; A. A. Escobal; S. H. Pereira

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14778-7

2024 Impact factor 4.8

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2025) 85: 1025
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14778-7

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Can decaying vacuum solve the $H_{0}$ tension?

L. S. Brito¹^a, J. F. Jesus¹^,2, A. A. Escobal¹^,3^,4 and S. H. Pereira¹

¹ Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Faculdade de Engenharia e Ciências, Departamento de Física, Av. Dr. Ariberto Pereira da Cunha 333, 12516-410, Guaratinguetá, SP, Brazil
² Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Instituto de Ciências e Engenharia, Departamento de Ciências e Tecnologia, R. Geraldo Alckmin, 519, 18409-010, Itapeva, SP, Brazil
³ Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, Anhui, China
⁴ Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-900, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

^a lucas.s.brito@unesp.br

Received: 28 January 2025
Accepted: 8 September 2025
Published online: 19 September 2025

Abstract

In the present work we analyze two different models of interaction between dark energy and dark matter, also known as vacuum decay models or $Λ (t)$ $\Lambda (t)$ CDM models. In both models, when the $H_{0}$ $$H_0$$ parameter is constrained by high-redshift data as the Planck distance priors (CMB) and transversal BAO, its value is compatible with a higher value of $H_{0}$ $$H_0$$ , in agreement with low-redshift data, as Pantheon+ &SH0ES (PS) and Cosmic Chronometers (CC). For one of the models, only a mild $\sim 2.1 σ$ $\sim 2.1\sigma$ tension is found for $Ω_{m}$ $\Omega _m$ , which at least is an alleviation to the $≳ 5 σ$ $\gtrsim 5\sigma$ $H_{0}$ $$H_0$$ tension in the context of standard $Λ$ $\Lambda$ CDM model. We find $H_{0} = 71.63 \pm 0.60$ $H_0=71.63\pm 0.60$ km/s/Mpc for one model and $H_{0} = 71.67 \pm 0.60$ $H_0=71.67\pm 0.60$ km/s/Mpc for the other one, by combining CC+PS+BAO+CMB. We also find the decay parameter to be $ϵ = 0 . 0162_{- 0.0026}^{+ 0.0029}$ $\epsilon =0.0162^{+0.0029}_{-0.0026}$ for one model and $ϵ = 0.0209 \pm 0.0036$ $\epsilon =0.0209\pm 0.0036$ for the other one. All constraints are at 68% c.l. From these analyses, a noninteracting model is excluded at least at $5.8 σ$ $5.8\sigma$ c.l. We shall emphasize, however, that this result comes from an analysis that involves an approximated treatment to CMB, the Planck distance priors, as mentioned above. We have also verified that if the SH0ES prior is not included, the evidence for an interacting model decreases from $5.8 σ$ $5.8\sigma$ to $4 σ$ $4 \sigma$ , a result closer to other recent works in the literature. This shows that these types of models are promising in solving or at least alleviating the $H_{0}$ $$H_0$$ tension problem.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funded by SCOAP³.

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Can decaying vacuum solve the H0 tension?

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Can decaying vacuum solve the $H_{0}$ tension?