Inflation and primordial black holes as dark matter

We discuss the hypothesis that a large (or even a major) fraction of dark matter in the Universe consists of primordial black holes (PBH's). PBH's may arise from adiabatic quantum fluctuations appearing during inflation. We demonstrate that the inflation potential V(cphi) leading to the formation of a great number of PBH's should have a feature of the ``plateau''-type in some range ${\mathit{cphi}}_{1}$cphi${\mathit{cphi}}_{2}$ of the inflation field cphi. The mass spectrum of PBH's for such a potential is calculated.