Reassessing Evidence for Dark-Sector Interactions with Dynamical Dark Energy and DESI DR2

Abstract

Recent baryon acoustic oscillation measurements from DESI Data Release 2, when combined with CMB and supernova data, strengthen the motivation for exploring departures from $\Lambda$CDM in the late-time expansion history. Because an evolving dark-energy equation of state and an interaction within the dark sector can produce partially degenerate effects on the background expansion, their observational signatures should be assessed simultaneously. We first consider an interacting $w_0w_a$CDM model with $Q=\beta H\rho_{\rm de}$, using Planck and ACT CMB data, DESI DR2, and DES-Dovekie supernovae. Allowing the dark-energy equation of state to evolve substantially weakens the preference for a nonzero coupling, while the preference for dynamical dark energy persists. The interaction provides essentially no additional improvement in the best fit, suggesting that part of the coupling preference found in more restricted interacting models may reflect a degeneracy with dark-energy dynamics. We then examine the same interaction for three one-parameter dynamical dark-energy trajectories: thawing, mirage, and generalized emergent dark energy (GEDE). The role of the interaction depends strongly on the assumed trajectory. The thawing and GEDE models favor sizable couplings of opposite signs, whereas the mirage trajectory already closely follows the dark-energy evolution preferred by the data and provides little support for an additional interaction. These models also predict markedly different signatures in structure growth, ranging from enhanced matter clustering in the interacting thawing model to strong suppression in interacting GEDE. These contrasting growth signatures, despite substantial degeneracies at the background level, highlight late-time large-scale-structure observations as a promising avenue for distinguishing dark-energy dynamics from dark-sector interactions.