Reconciling the Tension Between Planck and BICEP2 Through Early Dark Energy

Abstract

We show the possibility that the observational results of the primordial gravitational waves from Planck and BICEP2 for the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ can be reconciled when an early dark energy was included. This early dark energy behaves like a radiation component at very early epoch. This is equivalent to induce additional number of effective neutrino species: $\Delta N_{eff}=[\frac{7}{8}(\frac{4}{11})^{4/3}]^{-1}\rho_{de}(a)/\rho_{\gamma}(a)$, where $\rho_{\gamma}(a)$ is the photon energy density and the numerical factors arise from converting to effective neutrino species. And $\rho_{de}(a)$ is the energy density of early dark energy. Combining the Planck temperature data, the WMAP9 polarization data, and the baryon acoustic oscillation data with and without BICEP2 data, we find that in this early dark energy model the tension between the observations from Planck and BICEP2 was relived at $2\sigma$ regions. But it cannot be removed completely due to the small ratio of early dark energy constrained by the other cosmic observations. As a byproduct, the tension between observed values of Hubble parameter from Planck and the direct measurement of the Hubble constant was removed in this early dark energy model.