Lectures on Cosmic Inflation and its Potential Stringy Realizations

TL;DR

This paper introduces cosmic inflation and explores recent string theory models attempting to embed inflation, aimed at graduate students with quantum field theory background but new to cosmology and string theory.

Contribution

It provides an accessible overview of cosmic inflation and reviews recent string theory approaches to realize inflationary models.

Findings

Summary of hot Big Bang and inflation concepts

Discussion of string theory attempts to embed inflation

Educational overview for graduate students

Abstract

These notes present a brief introduction to Hot Big Bang cosmology and Cosmic Inflation, together with a selection of some recent attempts to embed inflation into string theory. They provide a partial description of lectures presented in courses at Dubrovnik in August 2006, at CERN in January 2007 and at Cargese in August 2007. They are aimed at graduate students with a working knowledge of quantum field theory, but who are unfamiliar with the details of cosmology or of string theory.