| Abstract: Cosmic Inflation, that was once included in the Big Bang Cosmology in order to address its severe fine-tuning problems, has now become an integrated part of the Standard Model of Cosmology by predicting non-trivial observational signatures that are remarkably in accordance with the current precision cosmological data. Cosmic Inflation is a brief epoch of the early Universe when the Universe has expanded exponentially. Such an exponential expansion can be driven by the very simple dynamics of a slowly rolling scalar field, a.k.a. the inflaton field. However, such a simple picture of cosmic inflation assumes a very flat inflation potential where the inflaton field can slow roll. Moreover, due to this exponential expansion during inflation, the Universe becomes supercooled post inflation and is devoid of any matter or radiation. Thus the inflaton field must transfer its energy to radiation by oscillating at the bottom of a potential in order to "reheat" the Universe. Therefore, the standard picture of inflation demands a very stringent form of the inflaton potential that is difficult to realize in generic particle physics models. I will discuss a promising variant to this standard picture, known as Warm Inflation, where, by the very virtue of its dynamics, such restrictions can be alleviated making the inflationary scenario phenomenologically more sound. |
