Unified early and late Universe cosmology through dissipative effects in steep quintessential inflation potential models

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that dissipative effects in steep exponential quintessential inflation models can unify the descriptions of inflation, dark energy, and dark matter, aligning with observational data without requiring a kination phase.

Contribution

It introduces a unified framework where dissipative effects enable a consistent description of early and late Universe phenomena within steep exponential potentials.

Findings

Inflationary predictions agree with Planck data.

Dark matter production yields consistent abundances.

Late-time acceleration mimics a cosmological constant.

Abstract

By making use of a class of steep exponential type of potentials, which has been recently used to describe quintessential inflation, we show how a unified picture for both inflation, dark energy and dark matter can emerge entirely through dissipative effects. Dissipation provides a way for extending the applicability of a larger class of these potentials in the sense of leading to a consistent early Universe inflationary picture and producing observables in agreement with the Planck legacy data. Likewise, dissipative effects lead to dark matter production with consistent abundances and, towards the recent time of the Universe, drives the potential energy of the scalar quintessential field to dominate again, essentially mimicking a cosmological constant by today, with all cosmological parameters consistent with the observations. Both early and late Universes are connected and with no kination period in between.