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5. COMMENTS

In this talk, I have briefly reviewed several avenues for probing some of the non-standard predictions of inflation. There are yet other tests - in particular, searches for a small entropy component of primordial perturbations - that I have not had time to discuss. Since our current models of inflation, as successful as they may be in terms of the flatness and primordial perturbations, are really no more than toy models, any realistic model of inflation must be, in some sense, non-standard. Although I believe that forthcoming CMB satellite experiments are likely to further confirm a flat Universe, small deviations from the toy model must sooner or later arise. Unfortunately, no single inflation model is sufficiently well motivated to predict with any certainty the existence or detectability of any of these signatures. However, as we press forward with the study of galactic structure and formation, large-scale structure, and the CMB, we will inevitably develop the capabilities for learning more about inflation.


I thank my collaborators on the work reported here, and I acknowledge the hospitality of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. This work was supported at Caltech by NSF AST-0096023, NASA NAG5-9821, and DoE DE-FG03-92-ER40701, and at the KITP by NSF PHY99-07949.