Matching current observational constraints with nonminimally coupled dark energy

We show that a Universe with a nonminimally coupled scalar field can fit current measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe better than the standard <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</a:mi></a:math>-cold dark matter model or other minimally coupled dark energy models. In particular, the nonminimal coupling in this model allows for the dark energy model to exhibit stable phantom crossing behavior, which seems to be suggested by the constraints on the dark energy equation of state coming from the most recent data. While we find a clear improvement in the goodness of fit for this dark energy model with respect to others that have been considered in the recent literature, using information theoretic criteria, we show that the evidence for it is still inconclusive.