Resolving the Planck-DESI tension by non-minimally coupled quintessence

The Planck measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has established the $Λ$-cold-dark-matter ($Λ$CDM) model as the concordant model along with other observations. However, recent measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration have renewed the matter fraction $Ω_\mathrm{m}$ tension between DESI-$Λ$CDM and Planck-$Λ$CDM. Directly reconciling this CMB-BAO tension with a dynamical DE in Chevallier-Polarski-Linder (CPL) parametrization seems to imply a crossing of the equation-of-state through $w=-1$ at low redshifts. In this letter, we will illustrate with a string-theory-motivated model that, when the DM non-minimally couples to gravity via a quintessence field, a misidentification with the $w_0w_a$CDM model would exactly fake such a crossing behavior, while the coupled quintessence never crosses $w=-1$ but behaves as a standard CDM in the early Universe and approaches a cosmological constant in the late Universe. Such a non-minimal coupling is preferred over $3σ$ confidence level. The worsened $Ω_\mathrm{m}$ tension and $S_8$ tension in the $w_0w_a$CDM model are also resolved in our model.