pith. sign in

arxiv: astro-ph/9809272 · v1 · submitted 1998-09-22 · 🌌 astro-ph · gr-qc· hep-ph

A classification of scalar field potentials with cosmological scaling solutions

classification 🌌 astro-ph gr-qchep-ph
keywords fieldscalarfluiddensityperfectcosmologicalenergypotentials
0
0 comments X
read the original abstract

An attractive method of obtaining an effective cosmological constant at the present epoch is through the potential energy of a scalar field. Considering models with a perfect fluid and a scalar field, we classify all potentials for which the scalar field energy density scales as a power-law of the scale factor when the perfect fluid density dominates. There are three possibilities. The first two are well known; the much-investigated exponential potentials have the scalar field mimicking the evolution of the perfect fluid, while for negative power-laws, introduced by Ratra and Peebles, the scalar field density grows relative to that of the fluid. The third possibility is a new one, where the potential is a positive power-law and the scalar field energy density decays relative to the perfect fluid. We provide a complete analysis of exact solutions and their stability properties, and investigate a range of possible cosmological applications.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.