Stagflation -- Bose-Einstein condensation in the early universe

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified Bose-Einstein condensation model explaining both early universe inflation and current acceleration, introducing the concept of stagflation where inflation ends at zero energy density with particle production and BEC decay.

Contribution

It extends BEC cosmology to the early universe, explaining inflation and its termination without new ingredients, and introduces the novel concept of stagflation with detailed fluctuation analysis.

Findings

The model naturally initiates inflation via boson condensation.

Stagflation ends inflation at zero energy density with particle production.

Density fluctuations match observational data.

Abstract

Our universe experienced the accelerated expansion at least twice; an extreme inflationary acceleration in the early universe and the recent mild acceleration. By introducing the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) phase of a boson field, we have been developing a unified model of dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM) for the later mild acceleration. In this scenario, two phases of BEC (=DE) and normal gas (=DM) transform with each other through BEC phase transition. This unified model has successfully explained the mild acceleration as an attractor. We extend this BEC cosmology to the early universe without introducing new ingredients. In this scenario, the inflation is naturally initiated by the condensation of the bosons in the huge vacuum energy. This inflation and even the cosmic expansion eventually terminates exactly at zero energy density. We call this stage as stagflation. At this stagflation era, particle production and the decay of BEC take place. The former makes the universe turn into the standard hot big bang stage and the latter makes the cosmological constant vanishingly small after the inflation. Furthermore, we calculate the density fluctuations produced in this model, which turns out to be in the range allowed by the present observational data. We also show that the stagflation is quite robust and easily appears when one allows negative region of the potential. Further, we comment on the possibility that BEC generation/decay series might have continued all the time in the cosmic history from the inflation to present.