Quintessence and phantoms in light of DESI 2025

Understand

We analyse DESI BAO, CMB, and supernova data to explore the physical origin of the DESI indication for dynamical dark energy.

• Beyond the standard CPL parametrization, we explore truncated alternatives and quintessence models.
• We conclude that there is compelling evidence for dark energy to be decaying in the late universe, but the evidence for a phantom behaviour is less significant.
• Models without phantom behaviour are compatible with the data at the $2\sigma$ CL.