https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-026-15468-8
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
The energy conditions and model selection in the local Universe
1
Department of Physics, The University of Arizona, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA
2
Department of Physics, the Applied Math Program, and Department of Astronomy, The University of Arizona, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA
3
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 210023, Nanjing, China
4
School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China
a
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Received:
4
November
2025
Accepted:
19
February
2026
Published online:
5
March
2026
Abstract
The four principal energy conditions (ECs) in general relativity prohibit negative energies, repulsive gravity and superluminal energy flows. One must invoke exotic matter to violate any one of these, yet 
CDM does so quite prominently during inflation and in the epoch of dark energy dominance. In this paper, we carry out model selection between the standard model and the 
universe using a combination of HII galaxy and cosmic chronometer measurements in the local Universe, and directly compare the results to the constraints imposed by the ECs. We find that the latter cosmology is not only strongly favored by these data, with a likelihood of 
versus only 
for the former, but that its optimized fit is fully compliant with all four ECs, while CDM’s best fit violates the so-called strong energy condition at 
.
Fulvio Melia: John Woodruff Simpson Fellow.
© The Author(s) 2026
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Funded by SCOAP3.
