Can the Inflaton and the Quintessence scalar be the same field?

Abstract

The most recent cosmological data point in the direction of a cosmological constant dominated universe. A suitable candidate for providing the required acceleration is a rolling scalar field named ``quintessence''. We address the issue of building a particle physics model for quintessence in the context of Susy QCD. We then go on to ask if the quintessence scalar can be identified with the inflaton field and give two examples in which this is indeed the case.

Comments: 4 pages. Talk given at COSMO99, Trieste, Italy, September 1999. To appear in the Proceedings