Purba Mukherjee, Arman Shafieloo, Varun Sahni, Yuri Shtanov

Recent DESI observations hint at a preference for dynamical dark energy with an equation of state (EoS) that crosses the phantom divide at $w=-1$. In this work, we investigate \textit{metastable} dark energy (DE) on the minimal phantom brane. Braneworld effects lead to $w < -1$ at early times, whereas metastable decay of DE results in $w > -1$ at late times. We consider three metastable decay prescriptions on the phantom brane: an exponentially decaying DE component (M1), decay of DE into non-baryonic dark matter (M2), and decay into dark radiation (M3). Using CMB observations, DESI DR2 BAO measurements, and the DES-Dovekie Type Ia supernova sample, we compare these models with $Λ$CDM, the Chevallier--Polarski--Linder (CPL) parametrization, and the minimal phantom-brane model with a non-decaying $Λ$. We find that metastable models on the brane are preferred over $Λ$CDM, their decay rates being $Γ/H_0=0.362\pm0.086$, $0.539\pm0.125$, and $0.483\pm0.112$ for M1, M2, and M3, respectively. Best fits of metastable models improve over $Λ$CDM by $Δχ^2_{\rm MAP}=-17.14$, $-18.76$, and $-18.22$, while the corresponding $Δ{\rm DIC}$ values are $-8.66$, $-9.63$, and $-6.56$. Braneworld screening drives effective phantom behaviour at $z\gtrsim0.4$, while DE decay drives the EoS toward non-phantom values closer to the present epoch, with the phantom divide $w=-1$ being crossed at $z \simeq 0.3$--$0.4$. These results show that the interplay between metastable decay and phantom-brane screening provides a simple physical mechanism for an effective crossing of the phantom divide consistent with DESI observations.