Observational constraints on quintessence models of dark energy

Abstract: Scalar fields aptly describe equation of state of dark energy. The scalar field models were initially proposed to circumvent the fine tuning problem of cosmological constant. However, the model parameters also need a fine tuning of their own and it is important to use different observations to determine these parameters. In this paper, we use a combination of low redshift data to constrain the low redshift evolution of canonical scalar field parameters. For this analysis, we use the Supernova Type Ia observations, the Baryon Acoustic Observations and the Hubble parameter measurement data. We consider scalar field models of the thawing type of two different functional forms of potentials. The constraints on the model parameters are more stringent than those from earlier observations although these datasets do not rule out the models entirely. The parameters which let dark energy dynamics closely emulate that of a cosmological constant are preferred. The constraints on the parameters are suitable priors for further quintessence dark energy studies.