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Fate of bound systems in phantom and quintessence cosmologies

S. Nesseris,L. Perivolaropoulos

2004 · DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.70.123529
203 Citations

Abstract

We study analytically and numerically the evolution of bound systems in universes with accelerating expansion where the acceleration either increases with time towards a Big Rip singularity (phantom cosmologies) or decreases with time (quintessence). We confirm the finding of Caldwell et al. [R. R. Caldwell, M. Kamionkowski and N. N. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 071301 (2003).] that bound structures get dissociated in phantom cosmologies but we demonstrate that this happens earlier than anticipated in Ref. [R. R. Caldwell, M. Kamionkowski and N. N. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 071301 (2003).]. In particular we find that the 'rip time' when a bound system gets unbounded is not the time when the repulsive phantom energy gravitational potential due to the average ({rho}+3p) balances the attractive gravitational potential of the mass M of the system. Instead, the 'rip time' is the time when the minimum of the time-dependent effective potential (including the centrifugal term) disappears. For the Milky Way galaxy this happens approximately 180 Myrs before the Big Rip singularity instead of approximately 60 Myrs indicated in [R. R. Caldwell, M. Kamionkowski and N. N. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 071301 (2003).] for a phantom cosmology with w=-1.5. A numerical reconstruction ofmore » the dissociating bound orbits is presented.« less