Introduction to Cosmic Inflation and Dark Energy

Konstantinos Dimopoulos, presently Reader in Physics at Lancaster University, obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1992. He continued his studies in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) of the University of Cambridge (Darwin College), where he obtained the Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics in 1994 and his PhD in Particle Cosmology in 1998 under the supervision of Professor A.C. Davis. Dr. Dimopoulos had several post-doctoral appointments in the framework of EU Research Training Network Programmes, in the Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular (IFIC) in Valencia, Spain (1999–2001) and in the Physics Department of Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK (2001–2003). In 2003, he obtained a four-year Research Associate Fellowship in the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the National Centre for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’ in Athens, Greece, which he interrupted in 2004 when he was offered a staff position in the Physics Department of Lancaster University. His research interests centre around the physics of the very early Universe, in particular on particle cosmology, cosmic inflation, quintessential inflation, and cosmic vector fields.

1. Introduction. 2. Dynamics and Content of the Universe. 3. History of the Universe. 4. Inflation basics. 5. CMB Primordial Anisotropy and Structure in the Universe. 6. The Inflationary Paradigm. 7. Models of Inflation. 8. beyond Slow-roll Inflation. 9. Dynamic Dark Energy. 10. Epilogue