Related papers: Cosmology: from theory to data, from data to theor…
The recent announcement from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite experiment combined with other recent advances in observational cosmology verifies key components of the standard cosmological model. However, we argue…
Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
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…
Scientific cosmology has now reached its period of maturity with the establishment of a standard model, which is the theory of an expanding universe. The question of whether this expansion resolves itself, in the past, into a singularity…
Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the…
For a few years now, cosmology has a standard model. By this term, we mean a consistent theoretical background which is at the same time simple and broad enough to offer coherent explanations for the vast majority of cosmological phenomena.…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background represent a remarkable source of information for modern cosmology. Besides providing impressive support for the Big Bang model itself, they quantify the overall framework, or background, for…
Recent advances in our understanding of the Universe have revolutionized our view of its structure, composition and evolution. However, these new ideas have not necessarily been used to improve the teaching of introductory astronomy…
Cosmography represents an important branch of cosmology which aims to describe the universe without the need of postulating \emph{a priori} any particular cosmological model. All quantities of interest are expanded as a Taylor series around…
In these lectures I review the present status of the so-called Standard Cosmological Model, based on the hot Big Bang Theory and the Inflationary Paradigm. I will make special emphasis on the recent developments in observational cosmology,…
Studies of galaxy clusters have proved crucial in helping to establish the standard model of cosmology, with a universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A theoretical basis that describes clusters as massive, multi-component,…
Quantum cosmology has traditionally been studied at the level of symmetry-reduced minisuperspace models, analyzing the behavior of wave functions. However, in the absence of a complete full setting of quantum gravity and detailed knowledge…
In these lectures the present status of the so-called standard cosmological model, based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm is reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the origin of the cosmological perturbations we see…
It has become common to call this the "era of precision cosmology," and hence one rarely hears about the finiteness of the amount of information that is available for constraining cosmological parameters. Under the assumption that the…
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…
In cosmology, we would like to explain our observations and predict future observations from theories of the entire universe. Such cosmological theories make ontological assumptions of what entities exist and what their properties and…
Cosmography, as an integral branch of cosmology, strives to characterize the Universe without relying on pre-determined cosmological models. This model-independent approach utilizes Taylor series expansions around the current epoch,…
Astrophysics and cosmology can be used to test the standard model of particle physics under conditions and over distance and time scales not accessible to laboratory experiments. Most of the astrophysical observations are in good agreement…
Cosmology is becoming an important tool to test particle physics models. We provide an overview of the standard model of cosmology with an emphasis on the observations relevant for testing fundamental physics.