Forecast analysis on interacting dark energy models from future generation PICO and DESI missions

The next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) satellite missions are expected to provide robust constraints on a wide range of cosmological parameters with unprecedented precision. But these constraints on the parameters could weaken if we do not attribute dark energy to a cosmological constant. The cosmological models involving interaction between dark energy and dark matter can give rise to comparable energy densities at the present epoch, thereby alleviating the so-called cosmic coincidence problem. In the present paper, we perform a forecast analysis to test the ability of the future generation high-sensitive CMB, and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) experiments to constrain phenomenological interacting dark energy models. We consider cosmic variance limited future CMB experiment Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) along with BAO information from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), to constrain the parameters of the interacting dark sector. Based on the stability of the cosmological perturbations, we consider two possibilities for the interaction scenario. We investigate the impact of both coupling constant and equation of state parameter of dark energy on CMB temperature power spectrum, matter power spectrum, and fσ8. We have used simulated temperature and polarization data from PICO within the multipole ranges (ℓ = 2–4000), and as expected, we do see PICO alone produces better constraints than Planck on the ΛCDM parameters. With the integration of PICO and DESI missions, we observe a significant improvement in the constraints on several cosmological parameters, especially the equation of state parameter of dark energy. However, we note that additional data are required to constrain a small positive coupling constant.