Observational constraints on quintessence models of dark energy
  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.
