We study a coupled quintessence model with pure momentum exchange and present the effects of such an interaction on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and matter power spectrum. For a wide range of negative values of the coupling parameter $\beta$ structure growth is suppressed and the model can reconcile the tension between cosmic microwave background observations and structure growth inferred from cluster counts. We find that this model is as good as $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ for CMB and baryon acoustic oscillation data, while the addition of cluster data makes the model strongly preferred, improving the best-fit ${\chi }^2$ value by more than 16.

• Received 28 April 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.043518