Related papers: The Dark Universe
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
We review the current standard model for the evolution of the Universe from an early inflationary epoch to the complex hierarchy of structure seen today. We summarize and provide key references for the following topics: observations of the…
We have a well-established standard model for cosmology and prospects for considerable additions from work in progress. I offer a list of elements of the standard model, comments on controversies in the interpretation of the evidence in…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
The standard model of cosmology considers the existence of two components of unknown nature, ``dark matter'' and ``dark energy'', which determine the cosmological evolution. Their nature remains unknown, and other models can also be…
The standard model of cosmology relies on the existence of two components, "dark matter" and "dark energy", which dominate the expansion of the Universe. There is no direct proof of their existence, and their nature is still unknown. Many…
Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive…
With the beginning of the XXIst century, a physical model of our Universe, usually called the Standard Cosmological Model (SCM), is reaching an important level of consolidation, based on accurate astrophysical data and also on theoretical…
Cosmology now has a standard model - a remarkably simple description of the universe, its contents and its history. A symposium held last September in Cambridge, UK, gave this model a 'health check' and discussed fascinating questions that…
Dark matter represents currently an outstanding problem in both cosmology and particle physics. In this review we discuss the possible explanations for dark matter and the experimental observables which can eventually lead to the discovery…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
We review the current standard model for the evolution of cosmic structure, tracing its development over the last forty years and focusing specifically on the role played by numerical simulations and on aspects related to the nature of dark…
In this work we present a model of the universe in which dark energy is modelled explicitely with both a dynamical quintessence field and a cosmological constant. Our results confirm the possibility of a future collapsing universe (for a…
The current expansion of the Universe has been observed to be accelerating, and the widely accepted spatially-flat concordance model of general relativistic cosmology attributes this phenomenon to a constant dark energy, a cosmological…
In this concise, albeit subjective review of structure formation, I shall introduce the cosmological standard model and its theoretical and observational underpinnings. I will focus on recent results and current issues in theoretical…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure…