Cosmological perturbations of non-minimally coupled quintessence in the metric and Palatini formalisms

Abstract

Cosmological perturbations of the non-minimally coupled scalar field dark energy in both the metric and Palatini formalisms are studied in this paper. We find that on the large scales with the energy density of dark energy becoming more and more important in the low redshift region, the gravitational potential becomes smaller and smaller, and the effect of non-minimal coupling becomes more and more apparent. In the metric formalism the value of the gravitational potential in the non-minimally coupled case with a positive coupling constant is less than that in the minimally coupled case, while it is larger if the coupling constant is negative. This is different from that in the Palatini formalism where the value of gravitational potential is always smaller. Based upon the quasi-static approximation on the sub-horizon scales, the linear growth of matter is also analyzed. We obtain that the effective Newton's constants in the metric and Palatini formalisms have different forms. A negative coupling constant enhances the gravitational interaction, while a positive one weakens it. Although the metric and Palatini formalisms give different linear growth rates, the difference is very small and the current observation cannot distinguish them effectively.