Unifying Brane World Inflation with Quintessence

TL;DR

This paper reviews models that unify inflation and quintessence within brane world cosmology, highlighting the challenges of reheating and proposing instant preheating as an effective solution, with implications for gravity wave production.

Contribution

It introduces a viable reheating mechanism for brane world quintessential inflation, addressing issues of gravity wave overproduction and expanding the framework to include Gauss-Bonnet corrections.

Findings

Instant preheating effectively reheats brane world quintessential inflation.

Reheating via gravitational particle production is inefficient and produces excessive gravity waves.

Gauss-Bonnet brane world inflation offers promising extensions.

Abstract

We review the recent attempts of unifying inflation with quintessence. It appears natural to join the two ends in the framework of brane world cosmology. The models of quintessential inflation belong to the class of {\it non-oscillatory} models for which the mechanism of conventional reheating does not work. Reheating through gravitational particle production is inefficient and leads to the excessive production of relic gravity waves which results in the violation of nucleosynthesis constraint. The mechanism of {\it instant preheating} is quite efficient and is suitable for brane world quintessential inflation. The model is shown to be free from the problem of excessive production of gravity waves. The prospects of Gauss-Bonnet brane world inflation are also briefly indicated.