Effective equation of state for running vacuum: 'mirage' quintessence and phantom dark energy

Past analyses of the equation of state (EoS) of the Dark Energy (DE) were not incompatible with a phantom phase near our time. This has been the case in the years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations, in combination with the remaining cosmological observables. Such situations did not completely disappear from the data collected from the Planck satellite mission. In it the EoS analysis may still be interpreted as suggesting ωD −1, and so a mildly evolving DE cannot be discarded. In our opinion, the usual ansatzs made on the structure of the EoS for dynamical DE models (e.g. quintessence and the like) is too simplified. In this work, we examine in detail some of these issues and suggest that a general class of models with a dynamical vacuum energy density could explain the persistent phantom anomaly, despite this there is no trace of real phantom behaviour in them. The spurious or 'mirage' effect is caused by an attempt to describe them as if the DE would be caused by fundamental phantom scalar fields. Remarkably, the effective DE behaviour can also appear as quintessence in transit to phantom, or vice versa.