Inflationary cosmology and structure formation

TL;DR

This paper reviews inflationary models of the early universe, focusing on how scalar fields generate density fluctuations and how these fluctuations evolve into large-scale structures, comparing theory with observational data.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of inflationary theory, detailing the generation of density fluctuations and their role in structure formation, with an emphasis on recent observational constraints.

Findings

Inflationary models can account for observed large-scale structures.

Density fluctuations originate from scalar-field dynamics during inflation.

Current data constrains inflationary parameters and models.

Abstract

These lectures cover the basics of inflationary models for the early universe, concentrating particularly on the generation of density fluctuations from scalar-field dynamics. The subsequent gravitational dynamics of these fluctuations in dark matter in a Friedmann model are described, leading to a review of the current situation in confronting inflationary models with the latest data on the clustering of galaxies and other measures of large-scale structure.