Understand Inflation Theory: Scalar Field & Expansion/Supercooling

[robousy]

Hi,

I am trying to understand inflation from a pedagogical perspective and would like to ask if anyone has any lucid insights into the nature of the scalar inflation field and how/why the expansion/supercooling occurs.

Any clear explanations extremely appreciated.

 

[meteor]

In Guth's "old inflation", there's a moment that matter gets supercooled, it causes gravity to reverse direction, making it repulsive instead of attractive, that repulsion is what drives inflation

 

[Matrixman13]

The Inflaton field during the time of inflation was at a huge energy spike occurring from a random fluctuation. During the small time the field was in this state the universe obviously grew. When the inflaton field slid back down to its lower energy state, the universe stopped its extreme inflation and began growing at a normal pace from then on.