Inhomogeneous and interacting vacuum energy
Abstract
Vacuum energy is a simple model for dark energy driving an accelerated expansion of the universe. If the vacuum energy is inhomogeneous in spacetime then it must be interacting. We present the general equations for a spacetime-dependent vacuum energy in cosmology, including inhomogeneous perturbations. We show how any dark energy cosmology can be described by an interacting vacuum+matter. Different models for the interaction can lead to different behaviour (e.g., sound speed for dark energy perturbations) and hence could be distinguished by cosmological observations. As an example we present the cosmic microwave microwave background anisotropies and the matter power spectrum for two different versions of a generalised Chaplygin gas cosmology.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.0563,
title = {Inhomogeneous and interacting vacuum energy},
author = {Josue De-Santiago and David Wands and Yuting Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.0563},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures; to appear in the proceedings of IV International Meeting on Gravitation and Cosmology, Guadalajara, May 2012