Interacting cosmic fluids in power-law Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological models

We provide a detailed description for power-law scaling Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological scenarios dominated by two interacting perfect fluid components during the expansion. As a consequence of the mutual interaction between the two fluids, neither component is conserved separately and the energy densities are proportional to 1/t(2). It is shown that in flat FRW cosmological models there can exist interacting superpositions of two perfect fluids (each of them having a positive energy density) which accelerate the expansion of the universe. In this family there also exist flat power-law cosmological scenarios where one of the fluids may have a cosmological constant or vacuum energy equation of state (p = -rho) interacting with the other component; this scenario exactly mimics the behavior of the standard flat Friedmann solution for a single fluid with a barotropic equation of state. These possibilities of combining interacting perfect fluids do not exist for the non-interacting mixtures of two perfect cosmic fluids, where the general solution for the scale factor is not described by power-law expressions and has a more complicated behavior. In this study is considered also the associated single fluid model interpretation for the interaction between two fluids. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.