Hawking Radiation as a Mechanism for Inflation

The Friedman-Robertson-Walker (FRW) space-time exhibits particle creation similar to Hawking radiation of a black hole. In this essay we show that this FRW Hawking radiation leads to an effective negative pressure fluid which can drive an inflationary period of exponential expansion in the early Universe. Since the Hawking temperature of the FRW space-time decreases as the Universe expands this mechanism naturally turns off and the inflationary stage transitions to a power law expansion associated with an ordinary radiation dominated Universe.