Power spectrum in the Chaplygin gas model: tachyonic, fluid and scalar field representations

TL;DR

This paper compares different representations of the Chaplygin gas model—fluid, tachyonic, and scalar field—in terms of their power spectra and parameter estimations, revealing both similarities and differences in their cosmological implications.

Contribution

It demonstrates that while the three representations agree on supernova data, they differ in matter power spectrum predictions and parameter estimations, especially for the scalar field model.

Findings

Fluid and tachyonic models produce identical power spectra.

Scalar field model yields different parameter estimates, closer to ΛCDM.

Supernova data cannot distinguish between the three representations.

Abstract

The Chaplygin gas model, characterized by an equation of state of the type $p = - \frac{A}{\rho}$ emerges naturally from the Nambu-Goto action of string theory. This fluid representation can be recast under the form of a tachyonic field given by a Born-Infeld type Lagrangian. At the same time, the Chaplygin gas equation of state can be obtained from a self-interacting scalar field. We show that, from the point of view of the supernova type Ia data, the three representations (fluid, tachyonic, scalar field) lead to the same results. However, concerning the matter power spectra, while the fluid and tachyonic descriptions lead to exactly the same results, the self-interacting scalar field representation implies different statistical estimations for the parameters. In particular, the estimation for the dark matter density parameter in the fluid representation favors a universe dominated almost completely by dark matter, while in the self-interacting scalar field representation the prediction is very closed to that obtained in the $\Lambda$CDM model.