Cosmology: Standard and Inflationary

Abstract

In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the constituents of the ubiquitous dark matter. I then discuss the motivations for-and the fundamentals of-inflationary cosmology, particularly emphasizing the quantum origin of metric (density and gravity-wave) perturbations. Inflation addresses the shortcomings of the standard cosmology, specifies the nature of the dark matter, and provides the "initial data" for structure formation. I conclude by addressing the implications of inflation for structure formation and discussing the different versions of cold dark matter. The flood of data-from the Heavens and from Earth-should in the next decade test inflation and discriminate between the different cold dark matter models.