Spherical collapse in coupled quintessence with a $\Lambda$CDM background

In this work we study the growth of cold dark matter density perturbations in the nonlinear regime on a conformally coupled quintessence model in which the background is designed to mimic a $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. The spherical collapse of overdense regions is analysed. We highlight the role of the coupling on the overall dynamics, trace the evolution of the density contrast throughout the cosmic history and compute perturbative parameters such as the critical density contrast. We find that the coupling has the influence of delaying the collapse due to the slower growth of matter perturbations. We follow to compute the cluster number counts using the Press-Schechter and Sheth-Tormen mass functions. In both cases, the transfer of energy between the dark energy field and dark matter suppresses the number of objects at low redshifts and enhances the number at high redshifts. Finally, we compute the expected cluster number counts for two future surveys - eROSITA and the South Pole Telescope - and shed some light on the possibility of discriminating models with these missions.