Coupled Quintessence and CMB

Abstract

We revise the stability of the tracking solutions and briefly review the potentials of quintessence models. We discuss the evolution of linear perturbations for $V(\phi) = V_{0} \exp(\lambda \phi^2/2)$ potential in which the scalar field is non-minimally coupled to cold dark matter. We consider the effects of this coupling on both cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies and matter perturbations. We find that the phenomenology of this model is consistent with current observations up to the coupling power $n_{c} \leq 0.01$ while adopting the current parameters measured by WMAP, $\Omega_{\phi}^{(0)}=0.76$, $\Omega_{cdm}^{(0)}=0.191$, $\Omega_{b}^{(0)}=0.049$, and $h=0.70$. Upcoming cosmic microwave background observations continuing to focus on resolving the higher peaks may put strong constraints on the strength of the coupling.