Non-adiabatic dark fluid cosmology

Abstract

We model the dark sector of the cosmic substratum by a viscous fluid with an equation of state $p=-ζΘ$, where $Θ$ is the fluid-expansion scalar and $ζ$ is the coefficient of bulk viscosity for which we assume a dependence $ζ\propto ρ^ν$ on the energy density $ρ$. The homogeneous and isotropic background dynamics coincides with that of a generalized Chaplygin gas with equation of state $p = - A/ρ^α$. The perturbation dynamics of the viscous model, however, is intrinsically non-adiabatic and qualitatively different from the Chaplygin-gas case. In particular, it avoids short-scale instabilities and/or oscillations which apparently have ruled out unified models of the Chaplygin-gas type. We calculate the matter power spectrum and demonstrate that the non-adiabatic model is compatible with the data from the 2dFGRS and the SDSS surveys. A $χ^{2}$-analysis shows, that for certain parameter combinations the viscous-dark-fluid (VDF) model is well competitive with the $Λ$CDM model. These results indicate that \textit{non-adiabatic} unified models can be seen as potential contenders for a General-Relativity-based description of the cosmic substratum.