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Minimal Noncanonical Cosmologies

We demonstrate how much it is possible to deviate from the standard cosmological paradigm of inflation-assisted LambdaCDM, keeping within current observational constraints, and without adding to or modifying any theoretical assumptions. We show that within a minimal framework there are many new possibilities, some of them wildly different from the standard picture. We present three illustrative examples of new models, described phenomenologically by a noncanonical scalar field coupled to radiation and matter. These models have interesting implications for inflation, quintessence, reheating, electroweak baryogenesis, and the relic densities of WIMPs and other exotics.