  Modern cosmology provides a connection between the physics of particles and
fields and observational cosmology. Making use of this link, a wealth of new
observational data can be utilized to explore and constrain theories of
fundamental physics. Inflationary Universe models and topological defect
theories are the most popular current paradigms for explaining the origin of
structure in the Universe. In these lectures, I discuss various aspects of
inflation and topological defects in which there has been interesting recent
progress or in which there are outstanding problems. Particular emphasis is
given to how baryogenesis scenarios can be influenced by inflation and
topological defects.
