Abstract
A short review of inflation is given, starting with a description of the underlying mechanism and the scenario of events. Four variations--old inflation, new inflation, chaotic inflation, and extended inflation--are discussed. It is claimed that the inflationary model provides a plausible explanation for (i) the large number of particles in the universe, (ii) the Hubble expansion, (iii) the large-scale uniformity of the universe, (iv) the nearness of the universe to a critical density, (v) the absence of magnetic monopoles, and (vi) the scale-invariant spectrum of microwave background fluctuations observed by COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer). Finally, it is argued that the plausibility of inflation is enhanced by the fact that inflation is eternal.
Full text
PDF
Images in this article
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Albrecht A, Brandenberger RH, Matzner RA. Numerical analysis of inflation. Phys Rev D Part Fields. 1985 Sep 15;32(6):1280–1289. doi: 10.1103/physrevd.32.1280. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Guth AH, Pi SY. Quantum mechanics of the scalar field in the new inflationary universe. Phys Rev D Part Fields. 1985 Oct 15;32(8):1899–1920. doi: 10.1103/physrevd.32.1899. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kung JH, Brandenberger RH. Chaotic inflation as an attractor in initial-condition space. Phys Rev D Part Fields. 1990 Aug 15;42(4):1008–1015. doi: 10.1103/physrevd.42.1008. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- La D, Steinhardt PJ. Extended inflationary cosmology. Phys Rev Lett. 1989 Jan 23;62(4):376–378. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.62.376. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Steinhardt PJ, Accetta FS. Hyperextended inflation. Phys Rev Lett. 1990 Jun 4;64(23):2740–2743. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.2740. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Weinberg EJ. Some problems with extended inflation. Phys Rev D Part Fields. 1989 Dec 15;40(12):3950–3959. doi: 10.1103/physrevd.40.3950. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]