Quintom phase-space: beyond the exponential potential

Abstract

We investigate the phase-space structure of the quintom dark energy paradigm in the framework of spatially flat and homogeneous universe. Considering arbitrary decoupled potentials, we find certain general conditions under which the phantom dominated solution is late time attractor, generalizing previous results found for the case of exponential potential. Center Manifold Theory is employed to obtain sufficient conditions for the instability of de Sitter solution either with phantom or quintessence potential dominance.