A STRING SCENARIO FOR INFLATIONARY COSMOLOGY

We describe a scenario for inflation in the framework of noncritical s tring theory, which does not employ an inflaton field. There is an exp onential expansion of the volume of the Universe, induced by enormous entropy production in the early stages of cosmological evolution. This is associated with the loss of information carried by global string m odes that cross the particle horizon. It is the same loss of informati on that induces irreversible time dow when target time is identified w ith the worldsheet Liouville mode. The resulting scenario for inflatio n is described by a string analog of the Fokker-Planck equation that i ncorporates diffusion and dissipative effects. Cosmological density pe rturbations are naturally small.