Cosmic Inflation as Pressure Gradient Recursion Expansion

Conventional inflationary cosmology (Guth, Linde, Starobinsky) provides quantitative
predictions for the CMB power spectrum confirmed by Planck; this paper does not
challenge those results within their domain of validity. Instead, it develops the geometric substrate from which inflation emerges in the Cohesion Unified Field Theory.
In this framework, inflation arises from pressure gradient recursion expansion: a natural consequence of the universe inheriting pressure from the next higher scale when
the density-state variable Dst falls below a critical threshold Dcrit. Inflation begins
when the inherited pressure dominates the recursion resistance and ends when density
relaxes to the recursion equilibrium point. Horizon uniformity arises from recursion
synchronisation; flatness from pressure-driven curvature relaxation; structure seeds
from irregular slip phase threshold crossings during the expansion. The framework
predicts that structure perturbations are scale-invariant and arise from discrete slip
events; whether their amplitude matches the observed ∼ 10−5
scale requires quantitative
derivation from the slip phase geometry, which is the primary open problem. The
thermal population of the post-inflation universe — the role played by reheating in
conventional models — is identified as an open problem rather than claimed to be
absent. This is the first geometric, mechanical, and scale-consistent account of cosmic
inflation within the Cohesion UFT framework.