Cosmic Inflation

Abstract

I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics of ``cosmic coherence'' in the primordial perturbations. The issue of coherence is at the heart of much of the success inflation theory has achieved at the hands of the new microwave background data. While much of this review should be useful to anyone seeking to update their knowledge of inflation theory, I have also made a point of including basic material directed at students just starting research.