The Jungle Universe: Coupled cosmological models in a Lotka-Volterra framework

In this paper, we exploit the fact that the dynamics of homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann-Lemaître universes is a special case of generalized Lotka-Volterra system where the competitive species are the barotropic fluids filling the Universe. Without coupling between those fluids, Lotka-Volterra formulation offers a pedagogical and simple way to interpret usual Friedmann-Lemaître cosmological dynamics. A natural and physical coupling between cosmological fluids is proposed which preserves the structure of the dynamical equations. Using the standard tools of Lotka-Volterra dynamics, we obtain the general Lyapunov function of the system when one of the fluids is coupled to dark energy. This provides in a rigorous form a generic asymptotic behavior for cosmic expansion in presence of coupled species, beyond the standard de Sitter, Einstein-de Sitter and Milne cosmologies. Finally, we conjecture that chaos can appear for at least four interacting fluids.