Dust–radiation universes: stability analysis

Abstract

Flat and open universe models are considered, containing a mixture of cold matter (dust) and radiation interacting only through gravity, with the aim of studying their stability with respect to linear scalar perturbations. To this end the perturbed universe is considered as a dynamical system, described by coupled differential equations for a gauge\hs invariant perturbation variable and a relevant background variable. The phase\hs space analysis of this dynamical system shows that flat dust\hs radiation models are unstable, and open models structurally unstable, with respect to adiabatic perturbations. It is shown that there are perturbations which decay even if their wavelength at equidensity is larger than the corresponding Jeans scale. Metric and curvature perturbations are also briefly discussed. We believe that this analysis gives a clearer idea of the stability properties of realistic universe models than the standard one based on the Jeans scale, despite our simplifying assumptions.