Basics of inflationary cosmology

Abstract

The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched. Cosmological inflation, the subsequent oscillation and decay of the inflaton field, and the resulting reheating of the universe are studied in some detail. The density perturbations produced by inflation and the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation are introduced. The hybrid inflationary model is described. Two natural variants of the supersymmetric version of this model which avoid the disaster encountered in its standard realization from the overproduction of magnetic monopoles are presented.

23 pages, uses jpconf.cls, lecture given at Corfu Summer Institute on Elementary Particle Physics (CORFU2005), Corfu, Greece, 4-26 September 2005 (to appear in the proceedings)

References in corpus (4)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• Three Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis
• Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Temperature Analysis
• Consistency of cosmic strings with cosmic microwave background measurements

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Kaehler Potentials for Hilltop F-term Hybrid Inflation
• Semi-shifted hybrid inflation with B-L cosmic strings
• New smooth hybrid inflation
• Reducing the spectral index in F-term hybrid inflation through a complementary modular inflation
• Standard-smooth hybrid inflation
• Realistic Hybrid Inflation in 5D Orbifold SO(10) GUT