Related papers: Glimpses into the early Universe
Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin?…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
We aim to present a tutorial on the detection, parameter estimation and statistical analysis of compact sources (far galaxies, galaxy clusters and Galactic dense emission regions) in cosmic microwave background observations. The topic is of…
Theoretical investigations into the evolution of the early universe are an essential part of particle physics that allow us to identify viable extensions to the Standard Model as well as motivated parameter space that can be probed by…
One of the main challenges in cosmology is to quantify how small density fluctuations at the recombination epoch z around 1000 evolved into the galaxies and the large-scale structure we observe in the universe today. This thesis discusses…
This essay is a nontechnical primer for a broader audience, in which I paint a broad-brush picture of modern cosmology. I begin by reviewing the evidence for the big bang, including the expansion of our Universe, the cosmic microwave…
We review the status of bouncing cosmologies as alternatives to cosmological inflation for providing a description of the very early universe, and a source for the cosmological perturbations which are observed today. We focus on the…
The properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation provide unique constraints on cosmological models, i.e. on the content, history, and evolution of the Universe. I discuss the latest measurements of the spectral and spatial…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provides a remarkable window onto the early universe, revealing its composition and structure. In these lectures we review and discuss the physics underlying the main features of the CMB.
I review a number of particle-physics models that lead to the creation of magnetic fields in the early universe and address the complex problem of evolving such primordial magnetic fields into the fields observed today. Implications for…
Cosmological measurements of the radiation density in the early universe can be used as a sensitive probe of physics beyond the standard model. Observations of primordial light element abundances have long been used to place non-trivial…
We summarise the physics of first-order phase transitions in the early universe, and the possible ways in which they might come about. We then focus on gravitational waves, emphasising general qualitative features of stochastic backgrounds…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
The initial conditions of our Universe can be summarized on a single sheet of paper. Yet the Universe is full of complex structures today, such as stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies. In this review I describe the standard theoretical…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a snapshot of the early Universe when matter began to become structured and has been the focus of several recent observational campaigns. In this Perspective, we discuss the results from these…
These lecture notes cover mainly three connected topics. In the first part we give a detailed treatment of cosmological perturbation theory. The second part is devoted to cosmological inflation and the generation of primordial fluctuations.…
We present what we know on nucleosynthesis in the Universe and hypotheses that have been made in this regard. A brief description of the Universe's evolution during its different stages is offered, indicating which are the periods and…
The Cosmic Microwave Background provides our most ancient image of the Universe and our best tool for studying its early evolution. Theories of high energy physics predict the formation of various types of topological defects in the very…
The combination of detections of anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation and observations of the large-scale distribution of galaxies probes the primordial density fluctuations of the universe on spatial scales varying by…