Constraining interacting dark energy models with flux destabilization

A destabilization in the transfer energy flux from the vacuum to radiation, for two vacuum decay laws relevant to the dark energy problem, is analyzed using the Landau-Lifshitz fluctuation hydrodynamic theory. Assuming thermal (or near thermal) equilibrium between the vacuum and radiation, at the earliest epoch of the Universe expansion, we show that the law due to renormalization-group running of the cosmological constant term, with parameters chosen not to spoil the primordial nucleosynthesis scenario, does soon drive the flux to fluctuate beyond its statistical average value thereby distorting the cosmic background radiation spectrum beyond observational limits. While the law coming from the saturated holographic dark energy does not lead the flux to wildly fluctuate, a more realistic non-saturated form shows again such anomalous behavior. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.