Constraining Van der Waals quintessence by observations
Abstract
We discuss an alternative approach to quintessence modifying the usual equation of state of the cosmological fluid in order to see if going further than the approximation of perfect fluid allows to better reproduce the available data. We consider a cosmological model comprising only two fluids, namely baryons (modelled as dust) and dark matter with a Van der Waals equation of state. First, the general features of the model are presented and then the evolution of the energy density, the Hubble parameter and the scale factor are determined showing that it is possible to obtain accelerated expansion choosing suitably the model parameters. We use the estimated age of the universe and the data on the dimensionless coordinate distances to Type Ia supernovae and distant radio galaxies to see whether Van der Waals quintessence is viable to explain dark energy and to constrain its parameters.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0410503,
title = {Constraining Van der Waals quintessence by observations},
author = {S. Capozziello and V. F. Cardone and S. Carloni and S. De Martino and M. Falanga and A. Troisi and M. Bruni},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0410503},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
JCAP accepted version; a new section has been added and the matching with the data has been repeated in a different way also evaluating the positions of the peaks in the CMBR anisotropy spectrum; it is now a 24 pages paper with 8 figures