New general parametrization of quintessence fields and its observational constraints

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new way to parametrize quintessence dark energy models based on their dynamical equations, identifying key parameters that describe late-time evolution, but current data cannot tightly constrain these parameters.

Contribution

It proposes a novel parametrization of quintessence potentials using dynamical system variables, simplifying the description to three parameters for late-time behavior.

Findings

Only three dynamical parameters suffice for late-time evolution.

Current observational data do not tightly constrain the dynamical parameters.

The approach confirms the arbitrariness of quintessence potentials.

Abstract

We present a new parameterization of quintessence potentials for dark energy based directly upon the dynamical properties of the equations of motion. Such parameterization arises naturally once the equations of motion are written as a dynamical system in terms of properly defined polar variables. We have identified two different classes of parameters, and we dubbed them as dynamical and passive parameters. The dynamical parameters appear explicitly in the equations of motion, but the passive parameters play just a secondary role in their solutions. The new approach is applied to the so-called thawing potentials and it is argued that only three dynamical parameters are sufficient to capture the evolution of the quintessence fields at late times. This work reconfirms the arbitrariness of the quintessence potentials as the recent observational data fail to constrain the dynamical parameters.