Rapidly Descending Dark Energy and the End of Cosmic Expansion

Understand

If dark energy is a form of quintessence driven by a scalar field $\phi$ evolving down a monotonically decreasing potential $V(\phi)$ that passes sufficiently below zero, the universe is destined to undergo a series of smooth transitions.

• The currently observed accelerated expansion will cease; soon thereafter, expansion will come to end altogether; and the universe will pass into a phase of slow contraction.
• In this paper, we consider how short the remaining period of expansion can be given current observational constraints on dark energy.
• We also discuss how this scenario fits naturally with cyclic cosmologies and recent conjectures about quantum gravity.