📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological implications of Tsallis entropy in two widely discussed settings: the Cai-Kim thermodynamic derivation of the Friedmann equations and the holographic dark energy (HDE) scenario with the Hubble scale as infrared cutoff. In both cases, the dynamics introduce a nonextensivity parameter $\delta$, with standard $\Lambda$CDM recovered for $\delta=1$. Previous studies have argued that only small deviations from extensivity are observationally allowed, typically constraining $|1 - \delta| \lesssim 10^{-3}$. In this work we go further and present, for the first time, a systematic consistency analysis across the entire expansion history. We show that even mild departures from $\delta=1$ lead to pathological behavior in the effective dark energy sector: its density becomes negative or complex, its equation of state diverges, or alternatively it contributes an unacceptably large early-time fraction that spoils radiation domination and violates BBN and CMB bounds. Our results sharpen and unify earlier hints of tension, providing a clear physical explanation in terms of corrections that grow uncontrollably with expansion rate toward the past. We conclude that, within both the Cai-Kim and HDE frameworks, viable cosmology is realized only in the extensive limit, effectively collapsing the models back to $\Lambda$CDM. More broadly, our findings call attention to the importance of dynamical consistency and cosmological viability tests when assessing nonextensive entropies as possible explanations of the Universe's dynamics.