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In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the very early universe.Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate.
Vacuum state is a configuration of quantum fields representing a local minimum (but not necessarily a global minimum) of energy. Inflationary models propose that at approximately 10 −36 seconds after the Big Bang, vacuum state of the Universe was different from the one seen at the present time: the inflationary vacuum had a much higher energy density.
Along with Alexei Starobinsky and Andrei Linde, he won the 2014 Kavli Prize "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation." [1] Guth's research focuses on elementary particle theory and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe. He graduated from MIT in 1968 in physics and stayed to receive a master's and a doctorate, also in ...
The inflaton field is a hypothetical scalar field which is conjectured to have driven cosmic inflation in the very early universe. [1] [2] [3] The field, originally postulated by Alan Guth, [1] provides a mechanism by which a period of rapid expansion from 10 −35 to 10 −34 seconds after the initial expansion can be generated, forming a universe not inconsistent with observed spatial ...
Differences in the temperature of the cosmic background are smoothed by cosmic inflation, but they still exist. The theory predicts a spectrum for the anisotropies in the microwave background which is mostly consistent with observations from WMAP and COBE. [6] However, gravity alone may be sufficient to explain this homogeneity. [7]
Starobinsky inflation is a modification of general relativity used to explain cosmological inflation. It was the first model to describe how the universe could have gone through an extremely rapid period of exponential expansion.
The theory of inflation was first proposed in 1979, and published in 1981, by Alan Guth. [ 20 ] [ 21 ] His two main motivations for doing so were the flatness problem and the horizon problem , another fine-tuning problem of physical cosmology.
He was a pioneer of the theory of cosmic inflation, for which he received the 2014 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics together with Alan Guth and Andrei Linde. Born in Moscow , Starobinsky obtained a degree in physics from Moscow State University in 1972 and a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics from the Landau Institute for Theoretical ...