Confronting Phantom Dark Energy with Observations

TL;DR

This paper tests two phantom dark energy models against observational data, finding that the cosmological constant is most favored, but phantom models fit slightly better than quintessence models.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive observational constraints on power-law and exponential phantom dark energy potentials.

Findings

Cosmological constant remains the most statistically preferred model.

Phantom dark energy models fit the data slightly better than quintessence models.

Tight constraints on model parameters were obtained from SN-Ia, CMB, and BAO data.

Abstract

We confront two types of phantom dark energy potential with observational data. The models we consider are the power-law potential, $V\propto {\phi}^{\mu}$, and the exponential potential, $V\propto \exp({\lambda}{\phi}/{M_P})$. We fit the models to the latest observations from SN-Ia, CMB and BAO, and obtain tight constraints on parameter spaces. Furthermore, we apply the goodness-of-fit and the information criteria to compare the fitting results from phantom models with that from the cosmological constant and the quintessence models presented in our previous work. The results show that the cosmological constant is statistically most preferred, while the phantom dark energy fits slightly better than the quintessence does.