Galaxy Bias in Quintessence Cosmological Models

We derive the evolution of the linear bias factor, $b(z)$, in cosmologicalmodels driven by an exotic fluid with an equation of state: $p_{x}=w\rho_{x}$,where $-1\le w<0$ (quintessence). Our aim is to put constrains on differentcosmological and biasing models by combining the recent observationalclustering results of optical ({\em 2dF}) galaxies (Hawkings et al.) with thosepredicted by the models. We find that our bias model when fitted to the {\em2dF} clustering results predicts different bias evolution for different valuesof $w$. The models that provide the weak biasing ($b_{\circ} \sim 1.1$) ofoptical galaxies found in many recent observational studies are flat,$\Omega_{\rm m}=0.3$ with $w\le -0.9$. These models however, predict a weakredshift evolution of $b(z)$, not corroborated by N-body simulations.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap