TASI Lectures on Inflation
  In a series of five lectures I review inflationary cosmology. I begin with a
description of the initial conditions problems of the
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology and then explain how inflation, an
early period of accelerated expansion, solves these problems. Next, I describe
how inflation transforms microscopic quantum fluctuations into macroscopic
seeds for cosmological structure formation. I present in full detail the famous
calculation for the primordial spectra of scalar and tensor fluctuations. I
then define the inverse problem of extracting information on the inflationary
era from observations of cosmic microwave background fluctuations. The current
observational evidence for inflation and opportunities for future tests of
inflation are discussed. Finally, I review the challenge of relating inflation
to fundamental physics by giving an account of inflation in string theory.
