A new solution for inflation

This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the cosmic background. It is therefore manifest that anyone wishing to pursue the study of cosmology and large-scale structure should have this scenario at their disposal. The author hopes this paper will serve to `bridge the gap' between techni...

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 outloo...

This article contains a concise review of the theory of inflation. We discuss its main theoretical aspects as well as its observational predictions. We also explain how the most recent astrophysical observations constrain the inflationary scenario.

This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability of inflation or of subsets of inflationary models.

These lecture notes provide an introduction to cosmic inflation. In particular I will review the basic concepts of inflation, generation of density perturbations, and reheating after inflation.

The inflationary flow equations are a frequently used method of surveying the space of inflationary models. In these applications the infinite hierarchy of differential equations is truncated in a way which has been shown to be equivalent to restricting the set of models considered to those characterized by polynomial inflaton potentials. This paper explores a different method of solving the flow equations, which does not truncate the hierarchy and in consequence covers a muc...

I give a general review of the history of inflationary cosmology and of its present status.

A new closed-form inflationary solution is given for a hyperbolic interaction potential. The method used to arrive at this solution is outlined as it appears possible to generate additional sets of equations which satisfy the model. In addition a new form of decaying cosmological constant is presented.

There is very strong circumstantial evidence that there was an inflationary epoch very early in the history of the universe. In this lecture I will describe how we might be able to piece together some understanding of the dynamics during and immediately after the inflationary epoch.

These lectures provide a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the theory of cosmological perturbations generated during inflation which are thought to be the origin of structure in the universe.