Quintessence with two energy scales

We study quintessence models using low energy supergravity inspired from string theory. We consider effective supergravity with two scales $m_S,$ the string scale, and $m_{\mathrm{Pl}},$ the Planck scale, and show that quintessence naturally arises from a supersymmetry breaking hidden sector. As long as supersymmetry is broken by the F-term of a Polonyi-like field coupled to the quintessence field in the Kähler potential we find that the Ratra-Peebles potential and its supergravity version are generic predictions. This requires that the string scale decouples from the Planck scale, $m_S\ll m_{\mathrm{Pl}}.$ In the context of supergravity, the potential possesses a minimum induced by the supergravity corrections to the Ratra-Peebles potential at low redshifts. We study the physical consequences of the presence of this minimum.