The Dynamics of Inhomogeneous Dark Energy

Abstract

In this paper, by analyzing the dynamics of the inhomogeneous quintessence dark energy, we find that the gradient energy of dark energy will oscillate and gradually vanish, which indicates the gradient energy of the scalar field present in the early universe does not affect the current dynamics of the universe. Moreover, with the decaying of gradient energy, there exists a possible mutual transformation between kinetic energy and gradient energy. In the framework of interacting dark energy models, we argue that inhomogeneous dark energy may have a significant effect on the evolution of the cosmic background, the investigation of which still requires fully relativistic N -body numerical simulations in the future.

Nonlinear spherical perturbations in quintessence models of dark energy

“…In this article we present results from study of spherical collapse in a cosmology with dark energy modeled by a minimally coupled canonical scalar field called 'Quintessence' [37] (also see [23]). While there have been earlier attempts at modelling spherical collapse of matter with Quintessence or other models of dark energy, e.g., see [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], almost all of these employ either some perturbative approximation scheme, or make a strong assumption about quintessence field like non-clustering, zero speed of sound, etc. In this study, we do not make any assumption/approximation for field or metric apart from spherical symmetry.…”