Creation of Viscous Dark Energy by the Hubble Flow: Comparison with SNe Ia Master Sample Binned Data

Abstract

We study a cosmological model featuring evolutionary dark energy, according to the idea that the creation of its constituents arises from the gravitational field of the expanding universe, whose non-equilibrium physics is described by a non-zero bulk viscosity coefficient. This physical scenario calls for two additional parameters with respect to the {\Lambda}CDM model, one of which is the equation of state parameter of the created dark energy. The model is constrained by the requirement that its deceleration parameter coincides with the one predicted by the {\Lambda}CDM model. Then, we construct the effective running Hubble constant, a theoretical function that corresponds to the ratio of the Hubble parameter in our model to the {\Lambda}CDM expansion rate. The model's theoretical predictions for the effective running Hubble constant are compared with the binned data of the Supernovae Ia Master Sample. The comparison is performed by a MCMC procedure for each bin, with three parameters left free to vary, while the particle creation rate is taken from a grid of values, each of which is fixed in the given MCMC run. The most important result emerging from this analysis is that the created dark energy constituent corresponds to an equation of state parameter with phantom character. Only if particle creation is removed do the dark energy constituents acquire a quintessence character. No matter the intrinsic nature of the constituents, their effective z-dependent equation of state parameter is, both with and without considering particle creation, entirely of phantom nature across the considered redshift range.