Uma introdução à cosmologia inflacionária

Abstract

Studying the universe and understanding its origin and evolution has always been an interest of humanity and this is the purpose of cosmology, seeking to answer questions related to its structure, composition and dynamics. The so-called Standard Cosmological Model has had considerable success in explaining cosmological observations which indicates, for instance, that the Universe on large scales is homogeneous and isotropic and has been expanding. However, despite its great success, the standard cosmological model presents some problems, which among them we can highlight the horizon problem and the flatness problem. A widely accepted proposal to resolve these problems is that the universe, in its initial moment, went through a exponential expansion phase. Such a proposal constitutes what is known as inflationary models and besides solving some of the problems in the standard cosmological model, they also provide a good explanation about the formation of anisotropies in the universe through the amplification of quantum fluctuations in the generating field of inflation, the inflaton. In this work, we seek to elaborate a vast bibliographical review of the main aspects of the development of the inflationary proposal, emphasizing the theoretical concepts and elucidating the mathematical apparatus. Finally, we analyze different inflationary models based on data provided from cosmological observations and study the validity of some of the potentials that could generate the inflationary period.