What Are the Current Controversies in Quintessence Theory?

[NateQPublic]

Tonight makes me wish I had discovered this forum earlier!

My situation: my capstone course is basically writing a paper about something on the forefront of the scientific frontier. This is neither a report style of paper nor original work, but instead a sort of discussion on the controversy of some kind of issue in any of a slew of scientific fields.

My first love is astronomy, so I've chosen to write about quintessence. I've started doing my research and found a massive amount of reading to do. So, I'm asking for a bit of assistance: basically, could anyone list some of the current controversies in the theory of quintessence?

My apologies if this is vague; I'm really just getting started on this. If I can clear any additional questions up, I will.

 

[Chalnoth]

Well, basically, quintessence models are dynamical models of dark energy, and typically alternatives to the cosmological constant. None of them are compelling, unfortunately. And they have the additional problem that in some region of their parameter space, all of the quintessence models reduce to a cosmological constant, and thus cannot be distinguished from one if the parameters work out that way.

Anyway, if you want a rather in-depth review of our current knowledge, take a gander at this review article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0207347

It's from 2003, but it's still quite good.