Field Flows of Dark Energy

Understand

Scalar field dark energy evolving from a long radiation- or matter-dominated epoch has characteristic dynamics.

• While slow-roll approximations are invalid, a well defined field expansion captures the key aspects of the dark energy evolution during much of the matter-dominated epoch.
• Since this behavior is determined, it is not faithfully represented if priors for dynamical quantities are chosen at random.
• We demonstrate these features for both thawing and freezing fields, and for some modified gravity models, and unify several special cases in the literature.