Related papers: Contemporary Cosmology from Lakatos' viewpoint
Loop quantum gravity is a mature theory. To proceed to explicit calculations in cosmology, it is necessary to make assumptions and simplifications based on the symmetries of the cosmological setting. Symmetry reduction is especially…
I review in these lectures our present understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, making emphasis on the most recent observations of the acceleration of the universe, the precise measurements of the microwave background…
Barbour, Hawking, Misner and others have argued that time cannot play an essential role in the formulation of a quantum theory of cosmology. Here we present three challenges to their arguments, taken from works and remarks by Kauffman,…
The current status of the recent developments of the second-order gauge-invariant cosmological perturbation theory is reviewed. To show the essence of this perturbation theory, we concentrate only on the universe filled with a single scalar…
I review the basics of neutrino cosmology, from the question of neutrino decoupling and the presence of sterile neutrinos to the effects of neutrinos on the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure. Particular emphasis is put…
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…
We review all the cosmic shear results obtained so far, with a critical discussion of the present strengths and weaknesses. We discuss the future prospects and the role cosmic shear could play in a precision cosmology era.
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…
The difficult issues related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics and, in particular, the "measurement problem" are revisited using as motivation the process of generation of structure from quantum fluctuations in inflationary…
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…
We present mathematical details of several cosmological models, whereby the topological and the geometrical background will be emphasized.
Dark energy is one of the deepest puzzles in modern cosmology, and mounting evidence suggests that it is not just a cosmological constant but a genuinely dynamical component. Although cosmology and dynamical systems theory emerged from…
We consider a cosmological setup with the inflaton field in the presence of a redshift dependent Lorentz-violating time-like background to address the inflationary regime and other phases of the Universe. We also show that the regime of…
The Lya forest has emerged as one of the few systems capable of probing small-scale structure at high-z with high precision. In this talk I highlight two areas in which the Lya forest is shedding light on fundamental questions in cosmology,…
Apart from its debatable correctness, we examine the perturbative stability of the recently proposed cosmology from quantum potential. We find that the proposed quantum corrections invoke additional parameters which apparently introduce…
A recent criticism of cosmological methodology and achievements by Disney (2000) is assessed. Some historical and epistemological fallacies in the said article have been highlighted. It is shown that---both empirically and…
Focus of these lectures is the challenge of explaining the origin of structure in the Universe. The interplay between quantum field theory and classical general relativity has given rise to several interesting cosmological models which…
There have been recent attempts at justifying, from first principles, and within the standard framework, the emergence of classical behavior in the post-inflationary cosmological context. Accounting for this emergence is an important issue,…
A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified, in connection with growing debate about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the key ideas can be explained…
A new approach to special relativity is presented which introduces coordinate systems with imaginary time axes, observation systems, and coordinate bases.