Interacting Dark Sectors in light of DESI DR2

Abstract Possible interaction between dark energy and dark matter has previously shown promise in alleviating the clustering tension, without exacerbating the Hubble tension, when BAO data from SDSS DR16 is combined with CMB and SNIa data sets. With the recent DESI BAO DR2, there is now a compelling need to re-evaluate this scenario. We combine DESI DR2 with Planck 2018 and Pantheon+ SNIa data sets to constrain interacting dark matter dark energy models, accounting for interaction effects in both the background and perturbation sectors. Our results exhibit similar trends to those observed with SDSS, albeit with improved precision, reinforcing the consistency between the two BAO data sets. In addition to offering a resolution to the S8 tension, in the phantom-limit, the dark energy equation of state exhibits an early-phantom behaviour, aligning with DESI DR2 findings, before transitioning to w ∼ −1 at lower redshifts, regardless of the DE parametrization. However, the statistical significance of excluding w = −1 is reduced compared to their non-interacting counterparts.