An introduction to cosmological inflation

Abstract

An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary epoch explained. The most important aspect of inflation is that it provides a possible model for the origin of structure in the Universe, and key results are reviewed, along with a discussion of the current observational situation and outlook.

36 pages LaTeX file, with five figures incorporated using epsf. Page-efficient 2up postscript version (18 pages) at http://icstar5.ph.ic.ac.uk/~andrewl/trieste2up.ps To appear, proceedings of ICTP summer school in high-energy physics, 1998

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