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 K\"ahler 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, ${m}_{S}\ensuremath{\ll}{m}_{\mathrm{Pl}}.$ 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.