Inflation after Planck and BICEP2

Abstract

We discuss the inflationary paradigm, how it can be tested, and how various models of inflation fare in the light of data from Planck and BICEP2. We introduce inflation and reheating, and discuss temperature and polarisation anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation due to quantum fluctuations during inflation. Fitting observations of the anisotropies with theoretical realisations obtained by varying various parameters of the curvature power spectrum and cosmological parameters enables one to obtain the allowed ranges of these parameters. We discuss how to relate these parameters to inflation models which allows one to rule in or out specific models of inflation.