No Arabic abstract
A component of dark energy has been recently proposed to explain the current acceleration of the Universe. Unless some unknown symmetry in Nature prevents or suppresses it, such a field may interact with the pressureless component of dark matter, giving rise to the so-called models of coupled quintessence. In this paper we propose a new cosmological scenario where radiation and baryons are conserved, while the dark energy component is decaying into cold dark matter (CDM). The dilution of CDM particles, attenuated with respect to the usual $a^{-3}$ scaling due to the interacting process, is characterized by a positive parameter $epsilon$, whereas the dark energy satisfies the equation of state $p_x=omega rho_x$ ($omega < 0$). We carry out a joint statistical analysis involving recent observations from type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillation peak, and Cosmic Microwave Background shift parameter to check the observational viability of the coupled quintessence scenario here proposed.
We study the behaviour of linear perturbations in multifield coupled quintessence models. Using gauge invariant linear cosmological perturbation theory we provide the full set of governing equations for this class of models, and solve the system numerically. We apply the numerical code to generate growth functions for various examples, and compare these both to the standard $Lambda$CDM model and to current and future observational bounds. Finally, we examine the applicability of the small scale approximation, often used to calculate growth functions in quintessence models, in light of upcoming experiments such as SKA and Euclid. We find the deviation of the full equation results for large k modes from the approximation exceeds the experimental uncertainty for these future surveys. The numerical code, PYESSENCE, written in Python will be publicly available.
We investigate the observational effects of a quintessence model in an anisotropic spacetime. The anisotropic metric is a non-rotating particular case of a generalized Godels metric and is classified as Bianchi III. This metric is an exact solution of the Einstein-Klein-Gordon field equations with an anisotropic scalar field, which is responsible for the anisotropy of the spacetime geometry. We test the model against observations of type Ia supernovae, analyzing the SDSS dataset calibrated with the MLCS2k2 fitter, and the results are compared to standard quintessence models with Ratra-Peebles potentials. We obtain a good agreement with observations, with best values for the matter and curvature density parameters $Omega_M = 0.29$ and $Omega_k= 0.01$ respectively. We conclude that present SNe Ia observations cannot, alone, distinguish a possible anisotropic axis in the cosmos.
We employ the metric of Schwarzschild space surrounded by quintessential matter to study the trajectories of test masses on the motion of a binary system. The results, which are obtained through the gradually approximate approach, can be used to search for dark energy via the difference of the azimuth angle of the pericenter. The classification of the motion is discussed.
We examine hilltop quintessence models, in which the scalar field is rolling near a local maximum in the potential, and w is close to -1. We first derive a general equation for the evolution of the scalar field in the limit where w is close to -1. We solve this equation for the case of hilltop quintessence to derive w as a function of the scale factor; these solutions depend on the curvature of the potential near its maximum. Our general result is in excellent agreement (delta w < 0.5%) with all of the particular cases examined. It works particularly well (delta w < 0.1%) for the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Boson potential. Our expression for w(a) reduces to the previously-derived slow-roll result of Sen and Scherrer in the limit where the curvature goes to zero. Except for this limiting case, w(a) is poorly fit by linear evolution in a.
We present an Effective Field Theory based reconstruction of quintessence models of dark energy directly from cosmological data. We show that current cosmological data possess enough constraining power to test several quintessence model properties for redshifts $zin [0,1.5]$ with no assumptions about the behavior of the scalar field potential. We use measurements of the cosmic microwave background, supernovae distances, and the clustering and lensing of galaxies to constrain the evolution of the dark energy equation of state, Swampland Conjectures, the shape of the scalar field reconstructed potential, and the structure of its phase space. The standard cosmological model still remains favored by data and, within quintessence models, deviations from its expansion history are bounded to be below the 10% level at 95% confidence at any redshift below $z=1.5$.