Abstract
We note that the essential idea of inflation, that the Universe underwent a brief period of accelerated expansion followed by a long period of decelerated expansion, can be encapsulated in a “closure condition” which relates the amount of accelerated expansion during inflation to the amount of decelerated expansion afterward. We present a protocol for systematically testing the validity of this condition observationally.
- Received 15 October 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.241301
© 2010 The American Physical Society
Viewpoint
Can we test inflationary expansion of the early universe?
Published 6 December 2010
A set of proposed relations among observable quantities may allow strong tests of whether a rapid expansion of the very early universe produced the seeds of the large-scale structure we see today.
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