An unstable D3-brane universe governed by the DBI action of the tachyon
field minimally coupled to a U(1) gauge boson is examined. The cosmological
evolution of this coupled system, is further analyzed, in terms of the
expansion rate of the inflating brane, which is highly affected by the presence
of the tachyonic and gauge field charges. We show, that the minimal coupling
makes the effective brane density less divergent. However, for some sectors of
the theory the tachyon is not able to regulate it in an efficient fashion.
Also, a detailed analysis of the dependance of the effective brane density on
the scale factor of the universe is performed, which leads to various
cosmological models.Comment: ReVTeX format 20 pages; v2 1 figure added, one additional paragraph
with extra comments added, enlarged list of references, version to appear in
JHE