Related papers: On Probability and Cosmology: Inference Beyond Dat…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
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…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
Does inflation provide a compelling explanation for why the universe is so large, so flat, and so old, and a predictive theory of density perturbations? In this brief contribution (based on the role of the author as moderator of the…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
Models of the Universe like the Concordance Model today used to interpret cosmological observations give expectation values for many cosmological observable so accurate that frequently peoples speak of Precision Cosmology. The quoted…
Constraints on cosmological parameters are often distilled from sky surveys by fitting templates to summary statistics of the data that are motivated by a fiducial cosmological model. However, recent work has shown how to estimate the…
In order to account for the observable Universe, any comprehensive theory or model of cosmology must draw from many disciplines of physics, including gauge theories of strong and weak interactions, the hydrodynamics and microphysics of…
A popular science article designed to introduce people familiar with basic cosmological nomenclature with models alternative to cosmological inflation. The paper briefly discusses the modern view of the Big Bang model, inflation (both its…
The Bayesian evidence is a key tool in model selection, allowing a comparison of models with different numbers of parameters. Its use in analysis of cosmological models has been limited by difficulties in calculating it, with current…
For nearly any challenging scientific problem evaluation of the likelihood is problematic if not impossible. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) allows us to employ the whole Bayesian formalism to problems where we can use simulations…
To what extent can our limited set of observations be used to pin down the specifics of a ``Theory of Everything''? In the limit where the links are arbitrarily tenuous, a ``Theory of Everything'' might become a ``Theory of Anything''. A…
The inflationary scenario is not the only paradigm of early universe cosmology which is consistent with current observations. General criteria will be presented which any successful early universe model must satisfy. Various ways, including…
It is only human nature to be reluctant to accept something new and different. This feeling is exacerbated given the success of the Big Bang model. However, there are cogent reasons for considering this new model. Some of the advantages of…
This textbook provides a systematic treatment of statistical machine learning for astronomical research through the lens of Bayesian inference, developing a unified framework that reveals connections between modern data analysis techniques…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
Bayesian inference is used to estimate continuous parameter values given measured data in many fields of science. The method relies on conditional probability densities to describe information about both data and parameters, yet the notion…
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…
With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost…