Warm Little Inflaton becomes Dark Energy
  We present a model where the inflaton field behaves like quintessence at late
times, generating the present phase of accelerated expansion. This is achieved
within the framework of warm inflation, in particular the Warm Little Inflaton
scenario, where the underlying symmetries guarantee a successful inflationary
period in a warm regime sustained by dissipative effects without significant
backreaction on the scalar potential. This yields a smooth transition into a
radiation-dominated epoch, at which point dissipative effects naturally shut
down as the temperature drops below the mass of the fermions directly coupled
to the inflaton. The post-inflationary dynamics is then analogous to a thawing
quintessence scenario, with no kination phase at the end of inflation.
Observational signatures of this scenario include the modified consistency
relation between the tensor-to-scalar ratio and tensor spectral index typical
of warm inflation models, the variation of the dark energy equation of state at
low redshifts characteristic of thawing quintessence scenarios, and correlated
dark energy isocurvature perturbations.
