(December 6, 2016 at 6:35 am)Alex K Wrote: A quick comment concerning Inflation: You lumped two different things together - the order is more like this
1. A quantum fluctuation lifts the inflaton field to a high energy state
2.This causes a huge amount of dark energy, leading to rapid expansion ("Inflation")
3. Then, the rapid expansion almost stops, the Inflaton field decays to matter and radiation ("reheating")
4. The universe keeps expanding and cooling in the usual way.
10^50 fold is a very high estimate, the number that is usually floated is 60 e-foldings, closer to 10^30
Ah alright, thanks.
