Unifying Brane World Inflation with Quintessence

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 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 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.