Phantom crossing from the Standard Model and General Relativity

Suggestions of a late-time phantom crossing from DESI baryon acoustic oscillation measurements, combined with cosmic microwave background and Type-Ia supernova observations, have renewed interest in non-standard dark energy models. In this Letter, we propose a new realization of a low redshift phantom crossing using only well understood ingredients from fermion condensation and general relativity. Our construction relies on the interplay between effective quintom-like dark energy and backreaction from non-linear structure formation. The full cosmological evolution is consistent with $\Lambda$CDM until low redshift, where the backreaction starts to become prominent and a phase transition occurs. At this point, the total dark energy equation of state first crosses $w_{\text{DE}}=-1$ from above. For benchmark values of the backreaction energy density, a second crossing from below occurs at a lower redshift, as suggested by recent observation. Fitting our theoretical model with CPL parametrization, we find the result is consistent with the combined DESI+CMB+SNIa data analysis with DESY5, PantheonPlus, and Union3 datasets. Specifically, for backreaction density parameter $\Omega_{\rm BR}(z=0) = 0.0572$, the CPL parametrization gives the phantom crossing redshift $z_* \simeq 0.35$, $w_0 \simeq -0.76$ and $w_a \simeq -0.93$.