Cosmological dynamics and dark energy with a quadratic equation of state: anisotropic models, large-scale perturbations, and cosmological singularities

In standard general-relativistic cosmology, for fluids with a linear equation of state (EoS) P=wρ or scalar fields, the high isotropy of the universe requires special initial conditions: singularities are velocity dominated and anisotropic in general. In brane world effective 4-dimensional cosmological models an effective term, quadratic in the energy density, appears in the evolution equations, which has been shown to be responsible for the suppression of anisotropy and inhomogeneities at the singularity under reasonable assumptions. Thus in the brane world isotropy is generically built in, and singularities are matter dominated. There is no reason why the effective EoS of matter should be linear at the highest energies, and an effective nonlinear EoS may describe dark energy or unified dark matter (Paper I [ K. Ananda and M. Bruni Phys. Rev. D 74 023523 (2006)]). In view of this, here we investigate the effects of a quadratic EoS in homogenous and inhomogeneous anisotropic cosmological models in general relativity, in order to understand if in this standard context the quadratic EoS can isotropize the universe at early times. With respect to Paper I [ K. Ananda and M. Bruni Phys. Rev. D 74 023523 (2006)], here we use the simplified EoS P=αρ+ρ2/ρc, which still allows for an effective cosmological constant and phantom behavior, and is general enough to analyze the dynamics at high energies. We first study homogenous and anisotropic Bianchi I and V models, focusing on singularities. Using dynamical systems methods, we find the fixed points of the system and study their stability. We find that models with standard nonphantom behavior are in general asymptotic in the past to an isotropic fixed point IS, i.e. in these models even an arbitrarily large anisotropy is suppressed in the past: the singularity is matter dominated. Using covariant and gauge-invariant variables, we then study linear anisotropic and inhomogeneous perturbations about the homogenous and isotropic spatially flat models with a quadratic EoS. We find that, in the large-scale limit, all perturbations decay asymptotically in the past, indicating that the isotropic fixed point IS is the general asymptotic past attractor for nonphantom inhomogeneous models with a quadratic EoS