Properties of cosmologies with dynamical pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons

Abstract

We study observational constraints on cosmological models with a quintessence field in the form of a dynamical pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson. After reviewing the properties of the solutions, from a dynamical systems phase space analysis, we consider the constraints on parameter values imposed by luminosity distances from the 60 Type Ia supernovae published by Perlmutter et al., and also from gravitational lensing statistics of distant quasars. In the case of the Type Ia supernovae we explicitly allow for the possibility of evolution of the peak luminosities of the supernovae sources, using simple empirical models which have been recently discussed in the literature. We find weak evidence to suggest that the models with supernovae evolution fit the data better in the context of the quintessence models in question. If source evolution is a reality then the greatest challenge facing these models is the tension between current value of the expansion age, H_0 t_0, and the fraction of the critical energy density, Omega_{phi0}, corresponding to the scalar field. Nonetheless there are ranges of the free parameters which fit all available cosmological data.

22 pages, RevTeX, 13 figures, epsf. v3: References added, plus a few sentences to clarify some small points; v4: Typos fixed

References in corpus (11)

• Cosmology and the Fate of Dilatation Symmetry
• The Risetime of Nearby Type Ia Supernovae
• A Preliminary Indication of Evolution of Type Ia Supernovae from their Risetimes
• Type Ia Supernovae, Evolution, and the Cosmological Constant
• General Scalar Fields as Quintessence
• A tracker solution to the cold dark matter cosmic coincidence problem
• New Constraints from High Redshift Supernovae and Lensing Statistics upon Scalar Field Cosmologies
• The Rise Times of High and Low Redshift Type Ia Supernovae are Consistent
• Influence of the Stellar Population on Type Ia Supernovae: Consequences for the Determination of Omega
• The Age of Globular Clusters
• Observational constraints upon quintessence models arising from moduli fields

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy
• Constraints on the generalized Chaplygin gas from supernovae observations
• The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III DR9 Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Testing Deviations from $\Lambda$ and General Relativity using anisotropic clustering of galaxies
• Dark energy with a gradient coupling to the dark matter fluid: cosmological dynamics and structure formation
• Confronting pNGB quintessence with data
• Planck Satellite Constraints on Pseudo-Nambu--Goldstone Boson Quintessence
• Testing Quintessence Axion Dark Energy with Recent Cosmological Results