We study the existence and stability of cosmological scaling solutions of a nonminimally coupled scalar field evolving in either an exponential or inverse power law potential. We show that, for inverse power law potentials, there exist scaling solutions the stability of which does not depend on the coupling constant $\xi .$ We then study the more involved case of exponential potentials and show that the scalar field will asymptotically behave as a baryotropic fluid when $\xi \ll 1.$ The general case $\xi \ll /1$ is then discussed and we illustrate these results by some numerical examples.

• Received 11 December 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.59.123510