Quasi-pole quintessential inflation in metric-affine gravity

Abstract

We study quintessential inflation in the framework of metric-affine gravity. It is well known that non-minimal couplings with the Holst invariant can generate a quasi-pole inflationary behaviour resulting in a Starobinsky-like phenomenology. The same quasi-pole behaviour can also be used in order to "flatten" the scalar potential in the Dark Energy era providing a successful framework for quintessential inflation. Agreement with all the observational constraints, reduces the predicted scalar spectral index to a narrow window: $0.966\lesssim n_s\lesssim 0.967$, making the model highly testable and falsifiable.

Comments: 20 pages, 7 figures, 1 table