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Dark energy from a quintessence (phantom) field rolling near potential minimum (maximum)

We examine dark energy models in which a quintessence or a phantom field, $ϕ$, rolls near the vicinity of a local minimum or maximum, respectively, of its potential $V(ϕ)$. Under the approximation that $(1/V)(dV/dϕ) \ll 1$, [although $(1/V)(d^2 V/dϕ^2)$ can be large], we derive a general expression for the equation of state parameter $w$ as a function of the scale factor for these models. The dynamics of the field depends on the value of $(1/V)(d^2 V/dϕ^2)$ near the extremum, which describes the potential curvature. For quintessence models, when $(1/V)(d^2 V/dϕ^2)<3/4$ at the potential minimum, the equation of state parameter $w(a)$ evolves monotonically, while for $(1/V)(d^2 V/dϕ^2)>3/4$, $w(a)$ has oscillatory behavior. For phantom fields, the dividing line between these two types of behavior is at $(1/V)(d^2 V/dϕ^2) = -3/4$. Our analytical expressions agree within 1% with the exact (numerically-derived) behavior, for all of the particular cases examined, for both quintessence and phantom fields. We present observational constraints on these models.