Constraining Evolution of Quintessence with CMB and SNIa Data

The equation of state of the hypothetical dark energy component, which constitutes about two thirds of the critical density of the universe, may be very different from that of a cosmological constant. Employing a phenomenological model, we investigate semi-analytically the constraints imposed on the scalar quintessence by supernovae observations, and by the acoustic scale extracted from recent CMB data. We show that a universe with a quintessence-dominated phase in the dark age is consistent with the current observational constraints.