Contributed chapter to " Proceedings of the New Cosmology Summer School" edt. M. Colless, to be published by World Scientific, 2003. Based on five lectures given at the 16th Canberra International Summer School "The New Cosmology" held 3-14 February at the Australian National University.
astro-ph/0305179

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INFLATION AND THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

Charles H. Lineweaver

School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
email: charley@bat.phys.unsw.edu.au


Abstract. I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the development of CMBology: the study of the cosmic microwave background. This cool (3 K) new cosmological tool is an increasingly precise rival and complement to many other methods in the race to determine the parameters of the Universe: its age, size, composition and detailed evolution.


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