Late time acceleration due to generic modification of gravity and Hubble tension

Shahnawaz A. Adil, Mayukh R. Gangopadhyay, M. Sami, Mohit K. Sharma

Published 2021-06-06Version 1

We consider a scenario of modified gravity, which is generic to late-time acceleration, namely, acceleration in the Jordan frame and no acceleration in the Einstein frame. The possibility is realized by assuming an interaction between dark matter and the baryonic component in the Einstein frame which is removed by going to the Jordan frame using a disformal transformation giving rise to an exotic effective fluid responsible for causing phantom crossing at late times. In this scenario, past evolution is not distinguished from $\Lambda$CDM but late time dynamics is generically different due to the presence of phantom crossing that causes a monotonous increase in the expansion rate giving rise to distinctive late-time cosmic feature. The latter can play a crucial role in addressing the tension between the observed value of Hubble parameter by CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) measurements and the local observations. We demonstrate that the Hubble tension significantly reduces in the scenario under consideration for the chosen scale factor parametrizations. The estimated age of the universe in the model is well within the observational bounds in the low and high red-shift regimes.