Related papers: Lectures on classical and quantum cosmology
These lecture notes cover some of the theoretical topics associated with cosmic acceleration. Plausible explanations to cosmic acceleration include dark energy, modified gravity and a violation of the Copernican principle. Each of these…
The goal of these lecture notes is to introduce the developing research area of gravitational-wave phenomenology. In more concrete terms, they are meant to provide an overview of gravitational-wave sources and an introduction to the…
This is a course on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the standard cosmological model, designed for beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduates. ``Standard cosmological model'' in this context means a Universe…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has 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 addressed by the standard cosmology and…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…
I will briefly discuss three cosmological models built upon three distinct quantum gravity proposals. I will first highlight the cosmological role of a vector field in the framework of a string/brane cosmological model. I will then present…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
These lectures have been given to particle physicists, mostly experimentalists and very briefly and at a pedestrian level review the problems of dark matter. The content of the lectures is the following: 1. Introduction. 2. Cosmological…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
We present mathematical details of several cosmological models, whereby the topological and the geometrical background will be emphasized.
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
After a brief introduction to classical and quantum gravity we discuss applications of loop quantum gravity in the cosmological realm. This includes the basic formalism and recent results of loop quantum cosmology, and a computation of…
These lecture notes are organized into ten lessons that summarize the status of inflationary cosmology.
The aim of this set of lectures is a systematic presentation of a 1+3 covariant approach to studying the geometry, dynamics, and observational properties of relativistic cosmological models. In giving (i) the basic 1+3 covariant relations…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
Our review is devoted to three promising research lines in quantum cosmology and the physics of the early universe. The nonperturbative renormalization programme is making encouraging progress that we here assess from the point of view of…
The particle production process is reviewed, through which cosmic inflation can produce a scale invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations of suitable fields starting from their quantum fluctuations. Afterwards, in the context of the…
In a series of five lectures I review inflationary cosmology. I begin with a description of the initial conditions problems of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology and then explain how inflation, an early period of accelerated…
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…
The big bang model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories are introduced. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent…