Models of Inflation: New Developments

A period of rapid expansion of the early universe, dubbed in?ation, is extremely successful in solving the horizon and ?atness problems of the standard Big Bang cosmology, and at the same time in explaining the origin of structures in the observable Universe. However, the problem of how to incorporate in?ation into a concrete model of high energy particle physics remains a challenge. After reviewing some basic aspects of inflationary cosmology I will describe recent progress of constructing inflation models in supergravity theor