Attractor behavior of phantom cosmology

We investigate the cosmological attractor of the minimally coupled, self-interacting phantom field with a positive energy density but negative pressure. It is proved that the phantom cosmology is rigid in the sense that there exists a unique attractor solution. We plot the trajectories in the phase space numerically for the phantom field with three typical potentials. Phase portraits indicate that an initial kinetic term decays rapidly and the trajectories reach the unique attractor curve. We find that the curve corresponds to the slow-climb solution. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.