Attractors and Isocurvature Perturbations in Quintessence Models

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of cosmological perturbations in scenarios with a quintessence scalar field, both analytically and numerically. In the tracking regime for quintessence, we find the long wavelength solutions for quintessential perturbations. We discuss the possibility of isocurvature modes generated by the quintessence sector and their impact on observations.

Comments: 10 pages, 7 figures; added appendix and 2 new figures; version submitted to Phys. Rev. D