Strongly Coupled Quintessence

We present a family of consistent quantum field theories of monodromy quintessence in strong coupling, which can serve as benchmarks in modeling dark energy different from cosmological constant. These theories have discrete gauge symmetries which can protect them from quantum field theory and quantum gravity corrections, both perturbative and nonperturbative. The strong coupling effects, at scales $\gtrsim {\rm mm}^{-1}$, flatten the potential and activate operators with higher powers of derivatives. The predicted equation of state is close to, but not exactly equal to, $-1$, thus being within reach of the (near) future programs to explore the nature of dark energy.