Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1712
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1712-4

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

The unification of inflation and late-time acceleration in the frame of k-essence

¹ Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8602, Japan
² Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8602, Japan

^* e-mail: nojiri@phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp

Received: 14 June 2011
Published online: 2 August 2011

Abstract

By using the formulation of the reconstruction, we explicitly construct models of k-essence, which unify the inflation in the early universe and the late accelerating expansion of the present universe by a single scalar field. Due to the higher derivative terms, the solution describing the unification can be stable in the space of solutions, which makes the restriction for the initial condition relaxed. The higher derivative terms also eliminate tachyon. Therefore we can construct a model describing the time development, which cannot be realized by a usual inflaton or quintessence models of the canonical scalar field due to the instability or the existence of tachyon. We also propose a mechanism of the reheating by the quantum effects coming from the variation of the energy density of the scalar field.