Inflation and String Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and current status of inflationary cosmology, emphasizing its integration with string theory and the challenges in identifying the most observationally favored models.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of inflationary theory's evolution and discusses recent efforts to embed inflation within string theory frameworks.

Findings

Inflationary theory has become the standard cosmological paradigm.

Embedding inflation in string theory remains challenging.

Future observations may distinguish between different inflation models.

Abstract

After 25 years of its existence, inflationary theory gradually becomes the standard cosmological paradigm. However, we still do not know which of the many versions of inflationary cosmology will be favored by the future observational data. Moreover, it may be quite nontrivial to obtain a natural realization of inflationary theory in the context of the ever changing theory of all fundamental interactions. In this paper I will describe the history and the present status of inflationary cosmology, including recent attempts to implement inflation in the context of string theory.