Part III: Cosmic Inflation

The Inflationary Paradigm

Cosmic inflation postulates an epoch of exponential expansion in the first ~10⁻³⁴ seconds of the universe. Originally proposed to solve the horizon, flatness, and monopole problems, inflation also provides a mechanism for generating the primordial density perturbations that seeded all cosmic structure. The slow-roll paradigm, driven by a scalar inflaton field, produces a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum consistent with CMB observations.