Related papers: Modern Cosmology, an Amuse-Gueule
The horizon for studies of element abundances has expanded dramatically in the last ten years. Once the domain of astronomers concerned chiefly with stars and nearby galaxies, this field has now become a key component of observational…
The current expansion of the Universe has been observed to be accelerating, and the widely accepted spatially-flat concordance model of general relativistic cosmology attributes this phenomenon to a constant dark energy, a cosmological…
With the beginning of the XXIst century, a physical model of our Universe, usually called the Standard Cosmological Model (SCM), is reaching an important level of consolidation, based on accurate astrophysical data and also on theoretical…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
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…
Whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental long-standing questions in cosmology. These questions of topological nature have become particularly topical, given the wealth of…
The present paradigm in cosmology is the usual Big-Bang Cosmology in which two stages of accelerated expansion are incorporated: the inflationary phase in the very early universe which produces the classical inhomogeneities observed in the…
The current cosmological paradigm, $\Lambda$CDM, is characterized its expansive description of the history of the Universe, its deep connections to particle physics and the large amounts of data that support it. Nonetheless, $\Lambda$CDM's…
Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
We are experiencing a period of extreme intellectual effervescence in the area of cosmology. A huge volume of observational data in unprecedented quantity and quality and a more consistent theoretical framework propelled cosmology to an era…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is Dark Energy, which is required to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe within the standard model. But maybe one can explain the observations without introducing new physics, by…
The standard theory of cosmic structure formation posits that the present-day rich structure of the Universe developed through gravitational amplification of tiny matter density fluctuations generated in its very early history. Recent…
I present the current status of the cosmic magnification produced by systematic amplification of background sources by large-scale structures. After introducing its principle, I focus on its interests for cosmology and underline its…
Age consistency for the Universe today has been an important cosmological test. Even more powerful consistency tests at times as early as 10^{-32} sec lie ahead in the precision era of cosmology. I outline tests based upon cosmic microwave…
For most of its history, cosmology was a qualitatively constrained discourse on the universe, shaped by limited observational access and the absence of global dynamical laws. This situation has changed decisively in recent decades. Modern…