No Arabic abstract
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 derive a closed-form, analytical expression for the spectrum of long-wavelength density perturbations in inflationary models with two (or more) inflaton degrees of freedom that is valid in the slow-roll approximation. We illustrate several classes of potentials for which this expression reduces to a simple, algebraic expression.
We use linear perturbation theory to study perturbations in dynamical dark energy models. We compare quintessence and tachyonic dark energy models with identical background evolution. We write the corresponding equations for different models in a form that makes it easier to see that the two models are very hard to distinguish in the linear regime, especially for models with $(1 + w) ll 1$. We use Cosmic Microwave Background data and parametric representations for the two models to illustrate that they cannot be distinguished for the same background evolution with existing observations. Further, we constrain tachyonic models with the Planck data. We do this analysis for exponential and inverse square potentials and find that the intrinsic parameters of the potentials remain very weakly constrained. In particular, this is true in the regime allowed by low redshift observations.
We consider cosmologies in which a dark-energy scalar field interacts with cold dark matter. The growth of perturbations is followed beyond the linear level by means of the time-renormalization-group method, which is extended to describe a multi-component matter sector. Even in the absence of the extra interaction, a scale-dependent bias is generated as a consequence of the different initial conditions for baryons and dark matter after decoupling. The effect is enhanced significantly by the extra coupling and can be at the 2-3 percent level in the range of scales of baryonic acoustic oscillations. We compare our results with N-body simulations, finding very good agreement.
We study multifield inflation in scenarios where the fields are coupled non-minimally to gravity via $xi_I(phi^I)^n g^{mu u}R_{mu u}$, where $xi_I$ are coupling constants, $phi^I$ the fields driving inflation, $g_{mu u}$ the space-time metric, $R_{mu u}$ the Ricci tensor, and $n>0$. We consider the so-called $alpha$-attractor models in two formulations of gravity: in the usual metric case where $R_{mu u}=R_{mu u}(g_{mu u})$, and in the Palatini formulation where $R_{mu u}$ is an independent variable. As the main result, we show that, regardless of the underlying theory of gravity, the field-space curvature in the Einstein frame has no influence on the inflationary dynamics at the limit of large $xi_I$, and one effectively retains the single-field case. However, the gravity formulation does play an important role: in the metric case the result means that multifield models approach the single-field $alpha$-attractor limit, whereas in the Palatini case the attractor behaviour is lost also in the case of multifield inflation. We discuss what this means for distinguishing between different models of inflation.
We study the evolution of linear density perturbations in a large spherical void universe which accounts for the acceleration of the cosmic volume expansion without introducing dark energy. The density contrast of this void is not large within the light cone of an observer at the center of the void. Therefore, we describe the void structure as a perturbation with a dimensionless small parameter $kappa$ in a homogeneous and isotropic universe within the region observable for the observer. We introduce additional anisotropic perturbations with a dimensionless small parameter $epsilon$, whose evolution is of interest. Then, we solve perturbation equations up to order $kappa epsilon$ by applying second-order perturbation theory in the homogeneous and isotropic universe model. By this method, we can know the evolution of anisotropic perturbations affected by the void structure. We show that the growth rate of the anisotropic density perturbations in the large void universe is significantly different from that in the homogeneous and isotropic universe. This result suggests that the observation of the distribution of galaxies may give a strong constraint on the large void universe model.