Rapidly descending dark energy and the end of cosmic expansion

If dark energy is a form of quintessence driven by a scalar field φ evolving down a monotonically decreasing potential V (φ) that passes sufficiently below zero, the universe is destined to undergo a series of smooth transitions. The currently observed accelerated expansion will cease; soon thereafter, expansion will come to end altogether; and the universe will pass into a phase of slow contraction. In this paper, we consider how short the remaining period of expansion can be given current observational constraints on dark energy. We also discuss how this scenario fits naturally with cyclic cosmologies and recent conjectures about quantum gravity.