TOWARDS A SOLUTION OF THE OMEGA-PROBLEM IN POWER LAW AND CHAOTIC INFLATION

In recent years it has been suggested that inflation dose not necessarily lead to the observable Universe having an energy density very close to the critical density. In this paper, the original argument is extended to incorporate a general inflationary scenario driven a by scalar field that self-interacts through an arbitrary potential V(phi). Specific attention is paid to exponential and phi4-type potentials. It is found that a universe with the observed value of OMEGA-0 is possible in these theories when the initial condition satisfy certain constraints.