Can dark energy evolve to the Phantom?

Abstract

Dark energy rapidly evolving from the dustlike state in the close past to the phantomlike state at present has been recently proposed as the best fit for the supernovae Ia data. Assuming that a dark energy component with an arbitrary scalar-field Lagrangian, which has a general dependence on the field itself and its first derivatives, dominates in the flat Friedmann universe, we analyze the possibility of a dynamical transition from the states with w>-1 to those with w<-1 or vice versa. We have found that generally such transitions are physically implausible because they are either realized by a discrete set of trajectories in the phase space or are unstable with respect to the cosmological perturbations. This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of the analytic results with numerical solutions obtained for simple models. Without the assumption of the dark energy domination, this result still holds for a certain class of dark energy Lagrangians, in particular, for Lagrangians quadratic in field's first derivatives. The result is insensitive to topology of the Friedmann universe as well.