Unified model of baryonic matter and dark components

Abstract

We investigate an interacting two-fluid cosmological model and introduce a scalar field representation by means of a linear combination of the individual energy densities. Applying the integrability condition to the scalar field equation we show that this "exotic quintessence" is driven by an exponential potential and the two-fluid mixture can be considered as a model of three components. These components are associated with baryonic matter, dark matter and dark energy respectively. We use the Simon, Verde and Jimenez [J. Simon, L. Verde, R. Jimenez, Phys. Rev. D 71 (2005) 123001] determination of the redshift dependence of the Hubble parameter to constrain the current density parameters of this model. With the best fit density parameters we obtain the transition redshift between non-accelerated and accelerated regimes zacc = 0.66 and the time elapsed since the initial singularity t0 = 19.8 Gyr. We study the perturbation evolution of this model and find that the energy density perturbation decreases with the cosmological time. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.