Related papers: Modern Cosmology, an Amuse-Gueule
The discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s was a watershed moment in modern cosmology, as it indicated the presence of a fundamentally new, dominant contribution to the energy budget of the universe. Evidence for dark…
In the late 1990s, observations of type Ia supernovae led to the astounding discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The explanation of this anomalous acceleration has been one of the great problems in physics since…
The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964 by Penzias and Wilson led to the establishment of the hot big-bang cosmological model some ten years later. Discoveries made in 1998 may ultimately have as profound an effect on…
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…
We discuss a cosmological model where the universe shrinks rather than expands during the radiation and matter dominated periods. Instead, the Planck mass and all particle masses grow exponentially, with the size of atoms shrinking…
Modern cosmology has created a tight link between particle physics / field theory and a wealth of new observational data on the structure of the Universe. These lecture notes focus on some of the most important aspects concerning the…
I review the present status of the Cosmic Microwave Background, with some emphasis on the current and future implications for particle physics. Conclusions are: gravitational instability in a dark matter dominated universe grew today's…
Although big bang cosmology effectively models even the most puzzling observational data, it offers no insight into why the cosmological expansion should occur at all. In this paper it is suggested that a finite Universe poses particular…
This chapter aims to present an introduction to current research on the nature of the cosmological dark matter and the origin of galaxies and large scale structure within the standard theoretical framework: gravitational collapse of…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
This is a brief review of the standard model of cosmology. We first introduce the FRW models and their flat solutions for energy fluids playing an important role in the dynamics at different epochs. We then introduce different cosmological…
The good agreement between large-scale observations and the predictions of the now-standard $\Lambda$CDM theory gives us hope that this will become a lasting foundation for cosmology. After briefly reviewing the current status of the key…
An overview is presented of a recently proposed "radically conservative" solution to the problem of dark energy in cosmology. The proposal yields a model universe which appears to be quantitatively viable, in terms of its fit to supernovae…
These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and…
We present a model of the expanding Universe that begins in a zero energy vacuum state. The Universe results from the spontaneous breaking of the electroweak symmetry, wherein the vacuum with positive expectation energy produces the dark…
WMAP and Planck open the way to unprecedented Big Bang phenomenology, potentially allowing to test the standard Big Bang model as well as less conventional approaches including noncyclic pre-Big Bang cosmologies that would incorporate a new…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration is one of the most important developments in modern cosmology. The observation, thirteen years ago, that type Ia supernovae appear dimmer that they would have been in a decelerating universe followed by…
The comparison of cosmic abundances of the light elements with the density of baryonic stars and gas in the universe today provides a critical test of big bang theory and a powerful probe of the nature of dark matter. A new technique allows…
A brief review of the present-day development of cosmology is presented for mixed physical audience. The universe history is briefly described. Unsolved problems are discussed, in particular, the mystery of the cosmological constant and…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…