Cosmological scaling solutions of non-minimally coupled scalar fields

Abstract

We study the existence and stability of cosmological scaling solutions of a non-minimally coupled scalar field evolving in either an exponential or inverse power law potential. We show that for inverse power law potentials there exist scaling solutions the stability of which does not depend on the coupling constant $\xi$. We then study the more involved case of exponential potentials and show that the scalar field will assymptotically behaves as a barotropic fluid when $\xi\ll 1$. The general case $\xi\not\ll 1$ is then discussed an we illustrate these results by some numerical examples.