Inflation’s theoretical underpinnings may be rather tentative: the inflaton, after all, is a hypothetical field whose existence has yet to be demonstrated; its potential energy curve is posited by researchers, not revealed by observation; the inflaton must somehow start at the top of its energy curve across a region of space; and so on. Despite all that, and even if some details of the theory are not quite right, the agreement between theory and observation has convinced many that the inflationary scheme taps into a deep truth about cosmic evolution.
