English

Quintessential Inflation in Light of ACT DR6

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2025-11-26 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We perform a precision investigation of smooth quintessential inflation in which a single canonical scalar field unifies the two known phases of cosmic acceleration. Using a CMB-normalized runaway exponential potential, we obtain sharply predictive inflationary observables: a red-tilted spectrum with ns=0.964241n_s = 0.964241 and an exceptionally suppressed tensor-to-scalar ratio r=7.48×105r = 7.48 \times 10^{-5} at N=60N=60, lying near the optimal region of current Planck+ACT constraints. Remarkably, all observable scales exit the horizon within an extremely narrow field interval Δϕ0.03MPl\Delta\phi \simeq 0.03\,M_{\rm Pl}, tightly linking early and late-time dynamics and reducing theoretical ambiguities. While inflationary tensors remain invisible to CMB B-mode surveys, the subsequent stiff epoch-an intrinsic hallmark of quintessential cosmology-imprints a blue-tilted stochastic gravitational-wave background within the discovery reach of future interferometers such as LISA, DECIGO, ALIA, and BBO. Our results demonstrate that this minimal, featureless model not only survives current bounds, but provides concrete, falsifiable predictions across gravitational-wave frequencies spanning over twenty orders of magnitude.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.19898,
  title  = {Quintessential Inflation in Light of ACT DR6},
  author = {Sayantan Choudhury and Swapnil Kumar Singh and Satish Kumar Sahoo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19898},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, Comments are welcome