Universe bouncing its way to inflation

While the inflationary paradigm is consistent with observations, it still suffers from the singularity problem. On the other hand, the classical bouncing scenario, while devoid of this problem, does not conform to observations. Here, we explore scenarios wherein the bouncing phase smoothly transits to an inflationary one, with the pivot scale leaving the Hubble horizon during the latter era, thereby maintaining consistency with observations. Staying within the ambit of Einstein-Hilbert gravity augmented by the inflaton, we achieve the bounce by introducing a second scalar field that helps engineer the requisite violation of the null energy condition. Potential ghost instabilities can be mitigated by invoking a non-trivial coupling between the two scalar fields.