Causality and Sound Speed for General Scalar Field Models, including w < -1, tachyonic, phantom, k-essence and curvature corrections

Details Causality and Sound Speed for General Scalar Field Models, including w < -1, tachyonic, phantom, k-essence and curvature corrections Causality and Sound Speed for General Scalar Field Models, including w < -1, tachyonic, phantom, k-essence and curvature corrections

2002-12-12

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0212302v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

LaTeX 12 pages, 3 figures. Accepted in JCAP. We included explicit discussion on k-essence, tachyonic and curvature corrections

Scientific paper

The result from the SN1a projects suggest that the dark energy can be represented by a fluid with w<-1. However, it is commonly argued that a fluid with |w|>1 contradicts causality. Here, we will show that a fluid with |w|>1 does not contradict causality if $w$ is not constant. Scalar field are the most promising candidates for describing the dark energy and they do not have a constant equation of state parameter w. Scalar potentials may lead to regions where w is larger or smaller than one and even regions where the group velocity $d p/d\rho$ diverges. We study the evolution of scalar field perturbations and we show that the "sound speed" is always smaller than the speed of light independently of the value of w=p/\rho or d p/d\rho. In general, it is neither the phase velocity nor the group velocity that gives the "sound speed". In the analysis we include the special cases of $|w|>1$, tachyonic, phantom, k-essence scalar fields and curvature corrections. Our results show that scalar fields do not contradict causality as long as there is dispersion.

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