title: Testing inflation: a bootstrap approach.
abstract: We note that the essential idea of inflation, that the Universe underwent a brief period of accelerated expansion followed by a long period of decelerated expansion, can be encapsulated in a "closure condition" which relates the amount of accelerated expansion during inflation to the amount of decelerated expansion afterward. We present a protocol for systematically testing the validity of this condition observationally.
authors.affiliation: Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Toronto M5S 3H8, Canada.
authors.forename: Latham
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Boyle
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Steinhardt