Dynamics of neutrino lumps in growing neutrino quintessence

Understand

We investigate the formation and dissipation of large scale neutrino structures in cosmologies where the time evolution of dynamical dark energy is stopped by a growing neutrino mass.

• In models where the coupling between neutrinos and dark energy grows with the value of the scalar cosmon field, the evolution of neutrino lumps depends on the neutrino mass.
• For small masses the lumps form and dissolve periodically, leaving only a small backreaction of the neutrino structures on the cosmic evolution.
• This process heats the neutrinos to temperatures much above the photon temperature such that neutrinos acquire again an almost relativistic equation of state.