On some exponential potentials for a cosmological scalar field as quintessence (Q1604926)

Based on the concept of dark energy, new models of the universe have been constructed in the last few years. Together with baryons, cold dark matter, photons and neutrinos, a fifth component has been added, the so-called quintessence field. Generalizing this idea, various cosmological models with a dynamical scalar field have been proposed, showing scaling solutions in the sense that at some time the energy densities of matter and scalar field simultaneously depend on some powers of the scale factor acting as attractors in phase space. When the exponents coincide, the so-called self-tuning solutions arise which are typically driven by exponential potentials. The paper under review considers exact solutions for two classes of exponential potentials in a scalar field model for quintessence and studies the reproduction of experimental data from supernovae.