Reconstructing the dark energy potential

Abstract

Dark energy equation of state can be effectively described by that of a barotropic fluid. The barotropic fluid model describes the background evolution and the functional form of the equation of state parameter is well constrained by the observations. Equally viable explanations of dark energy are via scalar field models, both canonical and non-canonical; these scalar field models being low energy descriptions of an underlying high energy theory. In this paper, we attempt to reconcile the two approaches to dark energy by way of reconstructing the evolution of the scalar field potential. For this analysis, we consider canonical quintessence scalar field and the phantom field for this reconstruction. We attempt to understand the analytical or semi-analytical forms of scalar field potentials corresponding to typical well behaved parameterisations of dark energy using the constraints from recent observations.