A novel approach to cosmological non-linearities as an effective fluid

Abstract

We propose a two parameters extension of the flat $\Lambda$CDM model to capture the impact of matter inhomogeneities on our cosmological inference. Non virialized but non-linearly evolving overdense and underdense regions, whose abundance is quantified using the Press-Schechter formalism, are collectively described by two effective perfect fluids $\rho_{\rm{c}},\rho_{\rm{v}}$ with non vanishing equation of state parameters $w_{\rm{c,v}}\neq 0$. These fluids are coupled to the pressureless dust, akin to an interacting DM-DE scenario. The resulting phenomenology is very rich, and could potentially address a number of inconsistencies of the standard model, including a simultaneous resolution of the Hubble and $\sigma_8$ tensions. To assess the viability of the model, we set initial conditions compatible to the Planck 2018 best fit $\Lambda$CDM cosmology and fit its additional parameters using SN~Ia observations from DESY5, BAO distances from DESI DR2 and a sample of uncorrelated $f\sigma_8$ measurements. Our findings show that backreaction effects from the cosmic web could restore the concordance between early and late Universe cosmological probes.