Inflation, Large Scale Structure and Particle Physics

Abstract

We review experimental and theoretical developments in inflation and its application to structure formation, including the curvaton idea. We then discuss a particle physics model of supersymmetric hybrid inflation at the intermediate scale in which the Higgs scalar field is responsible for large scale structure, and show how such a theory is completely natural in the framework extra dimensions with an intermediate string scale.

Comments: Invited talk at 9th International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology (PASCOS 03), Mumbai (Bombay) India, 3-8 Jan 2003. References added. 12 pages, 8 figs, style files included