Exact solutions for the interacting tachyonic-dark matter system (Q701998)

Recent results of string theory suggest the existence of ``tachyonic'' matter described by a scalar field. Motivated by that, Gibbons and other authors proposed to develop a tachyonic cosmology by coupling the tachyonic field to Einsteinian gravity. Such a phenomenological model attracted some attention in cosmology since this branch is open for many speculations and, moreover, this scalar field is sufficiently exotic so that one can cast the suspicion on it to be the missing dark energy and/or dark matter. The authors of the present paper assume a model, wherein the source term of Einstein's gravitational equations is given by tachyonic field coupled to dust modeling cold dark matter. Further, they introduce per hand the coupling term such that the ratio of the energy densities of both components at late times is constant and no coincidence problem arises. For this model, solutions are derived which lead to a power-law accelerated expansion for a homogeneous, isotropic and spatially flat universe.