The Dynamics of Inhomogeneous Dark Energy

Abstract

In this paper, by analyzing the dynamics of the inhomogeneous quintessence dark energy, we find that the gradient energy of dark energy will oscillate and gradually vanish, which indicates the gradient energy of the scalar field present in the early universe does not affect the current dynamics of the universe. Moreover, with the decaying of gradient energy, there exists a possible mutual transformation between kinetic energy and gradient energy. In the framework of interacting dark energy models, we argue that inhomogeneous dark energy may have a significant effect on the evolution of the cosmic background, the investigation of which still requires fully relativistic $N$-body numerical simulations in the future.