Lectures on Inflationary Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of inflationary cosmology, covering recent theoretical developments such as hybrid inflation, reheating, topological defects, and implications for fundamental constants and large-scale structure.

Contribution

It introduces new insights into the theory of a self-reproducing inflationary universe and explores potential nonperturbative deviations in density.

Findings

Discussion of hybrid inflation and reheating mechanisms

Analysis of a stationary self-reproducing inflationary universe

Preliminary results on large-scale density deviations

Abstract

A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating tolopogical defects. We also discuss the theory of a stationary self-reproducing inflationary universe, and its possible implications for evaluating the most probable values of the gravitational and cosmological constants. Finally, we discuss some preliminary results concerning possible nonperturbative large-scale deviations of density from the critical density in inflationary universe.