Nonlinear cosmological spherical collapse of quintessence

We present a study of the fully relativistic spherical collapse in the presence of quintessence using on numerical relativity, following the method proposed by the authors in a previous article [Phys. Rev. D 91, 024025 (2015)]. We ascertain the validity of the method by studying the evolution of a spherically symmetric quintessence inhomogeneity on a de Sitter background and we find that it has an impact on the local expansion around the center of coordinates. We then proceed to compare the results of our method to those of the more largely adopted top-hat model. We find that quintessence inhomogeneities do build up under the effect that matter inhomogeneities have on the local space-time, yet remain very small due to the presence of momentum transfer from the over-dense to the background regions. We expect that these might have an even more important role in modified theories of gravitation.