Cosmological Viability of Exponential Infrared $f(T)$ Gravity

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological viability of exponential infrared $f(T)$ teleparallel gravity using current cosmological observations. This framework realizes late-time cosmic acceleration through torsional modifications of gravity without enlarging the six-parameter cosmological parameter space of spatially flat $\Lambda$CDM, and admits two distinct solution branches: a phantom-like model (Model I) and a model featuring a negative-to-positive transition in the effective torsional dark-energy density (Model II). We constrain both branches using CMB observations from Planck, ACT, and SPT together with DESI BAO and Pantheon+ Type Ia supernovae. We find that the principal branch (Model I) alleviates the Hubble tension relative to $\Lambda$CDM, but remains statistically disfavoured by the combined dataset. The secondary branch (Model II) is decisively ruled out. We show that the failure of Model II originates from the interplay between background and perturbation constraints: once late-time distance measurements constrain the expansion history, the model becomes overconstrained, forcing correlated shifts in $\Omega_{\rm m}h^2$, $A_s$, $n_s$, and $\tau_{\rm reio}$, degrading the fit to the CMB damping tail and driving the optical depth to unphysical values. Our results demonstrate that perturbation observables provide stringent and complementary tests of teleparallel gravity beyond the background expansion history.