Constraints on interacting dark energy models from galaxy Rotation Curves

Interacting Dark Energy models have been introduced as a possible alternative to the standard ΛCDM concordance cosmological scenario in order to ease the fine-tuning problems of the cosmological constant. However, the interaction of the Dark Energy field with other massive particles in the universe induces also an effective modification of structure formation processes, leading to a different dynamical behavior of density perturbations with respect to the standard scenario. In particular, high-resolution N-body simulations have recently shown that also the structural properties of highly nonlinear objects, as e.g. their average concentration at a given mass, could be significantly modified in the presence of an interaction between Dark Energy and Dark Matter. While a constant interaction strength leads to less concentrated density profiles, a steep growth in time of the coupling function has been shown to determine a large increase of halo concentrations over a wide range of masses, including the typical halos hosting luminous spiral galaxies. This determines a substantial worsening of the "cusp-core" tension arising in the standard ΛCDM model and provides a direct way to constrain the form of the Dark Energy interaction. In the present paper we make use of the outcomes of some high-resolution N-body simulations of a specific class of interacting Dark Energy models to compare the predicted rotation curves of luminous spiral galaxies forming in these cosmologies against real observational data. Our results show how some specific interacting Dark Energy scenarios featuring a steep growth in time of the coupling function - which are virtually indistinguishable from ΛCDM in the background - cannot fit the observed rotation curves of luminous spiral galaxies and can therefore be ruled out only on the basis of dynamical properties of small-scale structures. Our study is a pilot investigation of the effects of a Dark Energy interaction at small scales, and demonstrates how the dynamical properties of visible galaxies can in some cases provide direct constraints on the nature of Dark Energy. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.