Related papers: Perspectives in cosmology
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
The standard model of cosmology has provided a good phenomenological description of a wide range of observations both at astrophysical and cosmological scales for several decades. This concordance model is constructed by a universal…
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…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…
Many pedagogical introductions of cosmological inflation are effective due to the simplicity of the relevant equations. Here an analytic solution of the cosmological equations is presented and used as an example to discuss fundamental…
The world view suggested by quantum cosmology is that inflating universes with all possible values of the fundamental constants are spontaneously created out of nothing. I explore the consequences of the assumption that we are a `typical'…
These lectures describe how the Standard Model of cosmology ($\Lambda$CDM) has developped, based on observational facts but also on ideas formed in the context of the theory of fundamental interactions, both gravitational and…
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed:…
In light of the recent observational data coming from the sky we have two significant directions in the field of theoretical cosmology recently. First, we are now able to make use of present observations, such as the Planck and BICEP2 data,…
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 consider the Standard Models of particle physics and hot big bang cosmology, and review the theoretical and experimental motivations for extending these models to include supersymmetry and inflation. An obvious extension would be to…
Modern cosmology has created a tight link between particle physics / field theory and a wealth of new observational data on the structure of the Universe. These lecture notes focus on some of the most important aspects concerning the…
Recent cosmological observations of unprecented accuracy, by WMAP in particular, have established a `Standard Model' of cosmology, just as LEP established the Standard Model of particle physics. Both Standard Models raise open questions…
I describe reasons to think we are living in an eternally inflating multiverse where the observable "constants" of nature vary from place to place. The major obstacle to making predictions in this context is that we must regulate the…
The paradigm of \Lambda CDM cosmology works impressively well and with the concept of inflation it explains the universe after the time of decoupling. However there are still a few concerns; after much effort there is no detection of dark…
This contribution consists of two parts. In the first part, I review the tunneling approach to quantum cosmology and comment on the alternative approaches. In the second part, I discuss the relation between quantum cosmology and eternal…
Models of cosmic inflation posit an early phase of accelerated expansion of the universe, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields in curved spacetime. Though detailed assumptions about fields and couplings vary across models,…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
In this talk I will review the present status of inflationary cosmology and its emergence as the basic paradigm behind the Standard Cosmological Model, with parameters determined today at better than 10% level from CMB and LSS observations.…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…