Generalized Chaplygin gas and CMBR constraints

Abstract

We study the dependence of the location of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) peaks on the parameters of the generalized Chaplygin gas model, whose equation of state is given by $p = - A/\rho^{\alpha}$, where $A$ is a positive constant and $0 < \alpha \le 1$. We find, in particular, that observational data arising from Archeops for the location of the first peak, BOOMERANG for the location of the third peak, supernova and high-redshift observations allow constraining significantly the parameter space of the model. Our analysis indicates that the emerging model is clearly distinguishable from the $\alpha = 1$ Chaplygin case and the $\Lambda$CDM model.