Late time acceleration in Brans-Dicke cosmology

In this work we investigate the possibility of having a late time accelerated phase of the universe, suggested by recent supernova observation, in the context of Brans-Dicke theory with a potential having a time dependent mass squared term which has recently become negative and a matter field. We find that while a perfect fluid (pressureless and with pressure) cannot support this acceleration, a fluid with dissipative pressure can drive this late time acceleration for a simple power-law expansion of the universe. We have also calculated some cosmological parameters in our model to match with observations.