A Study of Quintessential Inflation

Abstract

I present an analysis of a class of Dark Energy models called Quintessential Inflation Models. Such models are motivated by the common mathematical formalism describing the early expansion of the universe, i.e. inflation, and the late time accelerated expansion of space, i.e. quintessence. In particular, I examine the feasibility of such models and the ability of a subset of the proposed models in the literature to withstand the increasingly stringent conditions imposed by observational tests such as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Prove (WMAP) and the Supernova Legacy Survey.