Related papers: Particle cosmology
This series of lectures gives a pedagogical review of the subject of cosmological inflation. I discuss Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology and the horizon and flatness problems of the standard hot Big Bang, and introduce inflation as a…
I give a status report and outlook concerning the use of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies to constrain the inflationary cosmology, and stress its crucial role as an underlying paradigm for the estimation of cosmological…
We summarize the theoretical and observational status of the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. Its thermodynamic spectrum is a robust prediction of the Hot Big Bang cosmology and has been confirmed observationally. There…
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…
Cosmology is operating now on a well established and tightly constraining empirical basis. The relativistic LambdaCDM hot big bang theory is consistent with all the present tests; it has become the benchmark. But the many open issues in…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…
Today, both particle physics and cosmology are described by few parameter Standard Models, i.e. it is possible to deduce consequence of particle physics in cosmology and vice verse. The former is examined in this lecture, in light of the…
The cosmological model best capable of fitting current observational data features two separate epochs during which the Universe is accelerating. During the earliest stages of the Universe, such acceleration is known as cosmological…
The very basics of cosmological inflation are discussed. We derive the equations of motion for the inflaton field, introduce the slow-roll parameters, and present the computation of the inflationary perturbations and their connection to the…
A wide range of large scale observations hint towards possible modifications on the standard cosmological model which is based on a homogeneous and isotropic universe with a small cosmological constant and matter. These observations, also…
Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid universe is reconsidered and formally simplified by introducing new covariant and gauge-invariant variables with physical interpretations on…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…
The inflationary universe can be viewed as a "Cosmological Collider" with energy of Hubble scale, producing very massive particles and recording their characteristic signals in primordial non-Gaussianities. To utilize this collider to…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
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…
This is a short review, aimed at a general audience, of several current subjects of research in cosmology. The topics discussed include the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with particular emphasis on its relevance for testing inflation;…
We review the current status of cosmological parameters, dark energy and large-scale structure, from a theoretical and observational perspective. We first present the basic cosmological parameters and discuss how they are measured with…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…