The dark(er) side of inflation
Abstract
Description
We present a new approach to quintessential inflation, in which both dark energy and inflation are explained by the evolution of a single scalar field. We start from a simple scalar potential with both oscillatory and exponential behavior.We employ the conventional reheating mechanism of new inflation, in which the scalar decays to light fermions with a decay width that is proportional to the scalar mass. Because our scalar mass is proportional to the Hubble rate, this gives adequate reheating at early times while shutting off at late times to preserve quintessence and satisfy nucleosynthesis constraints.
8 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the XLIrst Rencontres de Moriond, Electroweak Interactions And Unified Theories,March 11 - 18, 2006 ; to be published in the associated proceedings
8 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the XLIrst Rencontres de Moriond, Electroweak Interactions And Unified Theories,March 11 - 18, 2006 ; to be published in the associated proceedings