Interacting vacuum energy in the dark sector

Abstract

We analyse three cosmological scenarios with interaction in the dark sector, which are particular cases of a general expression for the energy flux from vacuum to matter. In the first case the interaction leads to a transition from an unstable de Sitter phase to a radiation dominated universe, avoiding in this way the initial singularity. In the second case the interaction gives rise to a slow-roll power-law inflation. Finally, the third scenario is a concordance model for the late-time universe, with the vacuum term decaying into cold dark matter. We identify the physics behind these forms of interaction and show that they can be described as particular types of the modified Chaplygin gas.