Exponential Quintessence: curved, steep and stringy?

TL;DR

This paper investigates an exponential quintessence model for dark energy, analyzing its cosmological dynamics, constraints on parameters, and potential string theory origins, with implications for current and future observational data.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive dynamical analysis of exponential quintessence models, including constraints on parameters and links to string theory, with predictions for observational tests.

Findings

Upper bound on λ for accelerated expansion: λ ≲ √3

Universal evolution through radiation, matter, and acceleration epochs

Field distances remain sub-Planckian between BBN and today

Abstract

We explore the possibility that our universe's current accelerated expansion is explained by a quintessence model with an exponential scalar potential, $V =V_0\, e^{-\lambda\, \phi}$, keeping an eye towards $\lambda \geq \sqrt{2}$ and an open universe, favorable to a string theory realisation and with no cosmological horizon. We work out the full cosmology of the model, including matter, radiation, and optionally negative spatial curvature, for all $\lambda>0$, performing an extensive analysis of the dynamical system and its phase space. The minimal physical requirements of a past epoch of radiation domination and an accelerated expansion today lead to an upper bound $\lambda \lesssim \sqrt{3}$, which is driven slightly up in the presence of observationally allowed spatial curvature. Cosmological solutions start universally in a kination epoch, go through radiation and matter dominated phases and enter an epoch of acceleration, which is only transient for $\lambda>\sqrt{2}$. Field distances traversed between BBN and today are sub-Planckian. We discuss possible string theory origins and phenomenological challenges, such as time variation of fundamental constants. We provide theoretical predictions for the model parameters to be fitted to data, most notably the varying dark energy equation of state parameter, in light of recent results from DES-Y5 and DESI.