Inflation and precision cosmology

Abstract

A brief review of inflation is presented. After having demonstrated the generality of the inflationary mechanism, the emphasis is put on its simplest realization, namely the single field slow-roll inflationary scenario. Then, it is shown how, concretely, one can calculate the predictions of a given model of inflation. Finally, a short overview of the most popular models is given and the implications of the recently released WMAP data are briefly (and partially) discussed.