Search results for "Inflationary epoch"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Unduland universe: expansion with alternating eras of acceleration and deceleration
2005
If the equation of state for 'dark energy' varies periodically, the expansion of the Universe may have undergone alternating eras of acceleration and deceleration. We examine a specific form that survives existing observational tests, does not single out the present state of the Universe as exceptional, and suggests a future much like the matter-dominated past: a smooth expansion without a final inflationary epoch.
Phenomenological approaches of inflation and their equivalence
2014
In this work, we analyze two possible alternative and model-independent approaches to describe the inflationary period. The first one assumes a general equation of state during inflation due to Mukhanov, while the second one is based on the slow-roll hierarchy suggested by Hoffman and Turner. We find that, remarkably, the two approaches are equivalent from the observational viewpoint, as they single out the same areas in the parameter space, and agree with the inflationary attractors where successful inflation occurs. Rephrased in terms of the familiar picture of a slowly rolling, canonically normalized scalar field, the resulting inflaton excursions in these two approaches are almost ident…
Modeling quitessential inflation
2001
We develop general criteria to construct unified frameworks for inflation and quintessence which employ a unique scalar field to drive both. By using such a minimal theoretical framework we avoid having to fine-tune couplings and mass-scales. In particular the initial conditions for quintessence are already fixed at the end of the inflationary epoch. We provide concrete realizations of the method which meet all inflationary and quintessence requirements, such as the COBE normalization and the resulting spectral index n = 0.97, which is in excellent agreement with the latest CMB data.