Perturbations in a Chaplygin gas Cosmology

Abstract

In this paper we study the perturbations of a cosmic multi-fluid medium consisting of radiation, dust and a Chaplygin gas. To do so, we follow the 1 + 3 covariant formalism and derive the evolution equations of the fluctuations in the energy density for each species of fluid in the multi-fluid system. The solutions to these coupled systems of equations are then computed in both short-wavelength and long-wavelength modes. Our preliminary results suggest that unlike most dark energy models that discourage large-scale structure formation due to the rapid cosmological expansion (which gives little time for fluctuations to coalesce), the Chaplygin-gas model supports the formation of cosmic structures. This is manifested in the solutions of the perturbation equations which show the growth of density fluctuations over time.

SAIP2019 Proceedings, SA Institute of Physics 6 pages, 7 figures