Extended Quintessence: imprints on the cosmic microwave background spectra

Abstract

We describe the observable features of the recently proposed Extended Quintessence scenarios on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy spectra. In this class of models a scalar field $\phi$, assumed to provide most of the cosmic energy density today, is non-minimally coupled to the Ricci curvature scalar $R$. We implement the linear theory of cosmological perturbations in scalar tensor gravitational theories to compute CMB temperature and polarization spectra. All the interesting spectral features are affected: on sub-degree angular scales, the acoustic peaks change both in amplitude and position; on larger scales the low redshift dynamics enhances the Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect. These results show how the future CMB experiments could give information on the vacuum energy as well as on the structure of the gravitational Lagrangian term.