A new interacting two-fluid model and its consequences

Abstract In the background of a homogeneous and isotropic space-time with zero spatial curvature, we consider interacting scenarios between two barotropic fluids, one is the pressureless dark matter and the other one is dark energy (DE), in which the equation of state (EoS) in DE is either constant or time-dependent. In particular, for constant EoS in DE, we show that the evolution equations for both fluids can be analytically solved. For all these scenarios, the model parameters have been constrained using the current astronomical observations from Type Ia supernovae, Hubble parameter measurements and baryon acoustic oscillation distance measurements. Our analysis shows that both for constant and variable EoS in DE, a very small but non-zero interaction in the dark sector is favoured while the EoS in DE can predict a slight phantom nature, i.e. the EoS in DE can cross the phantom divide line ‘−1’. On the other hand, although the models with variable EoS describe the observations better, the Akaike Information Criterion supports models with minimal number of parameters. However, it is found that all the models are very close to the Λ cold dark matter cosmology.