Related papers: High precision cosmology
Over the last decade, cosmological observations have attained a level of precision which allows for very detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. We are beginning to learn the answers to some fundamental questions, using…
The origin of the large scale structure in the universe - galaxies, quasars, clusters, voids, sheets - is one of the most important questions in cosmology. One can show that some non-thermal energy density fluctuations must have been…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
Cosmic structures at large scales represent the earliest and most extended form of matter condensation. In this lecture we review the application of the methods and concepts of modern statistical physics to these structures. This leads to a…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in recent years. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more…
The present status of anisotropy studies for the highest energy cosmic rays is presented including the first full sky survey. Directions and prospects for the future are also discussed in light of new statistical methods and the last…
We review the present status of cosmological discoveries and how these confirm our modern cosmological model, but at the same time we try to focus on its weaknesses and inconsistencies with an historical perspective, and foresee how the…
Modern cosmology rests on the working assumption that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous at large scales. Here, we document a number of anomalous observations pointing to an anisotropic Universe in a direction consistent with the CMB…
We are at an interesting juncture in cosmology. With new methods and technology, the accuracy in measurement of the Hubble constant has vastly improved, but a recent tension has arisen that is either signaling new physics or as-yet…
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…
We review a cosmology in which particles are fluctuationally created from a background Zero Point Field. This cosmology is consistent with recent observations of an ever expanding and accelerating universe, as also the recently confirmed…
Major advances in the observation and theory of cosmic microwave background anisotropies have opened up a new era in cosmology. This has encouraged the hope that the fundamental parameters of cosmology will be determined to high accuracy in…
As the era of high precision cosmology approaches, the empirically determined power spectrum of the microwave background anisotropy, $C_l$, will provide a crucial test for cosmological theories. We present a unified semi-analytic framework…
The ten's of micro-Kelvin variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation across the sky encode a wealth of information about the Universe. The full-sky, high-resolution maps of the CMB that will be made in…
I discuss the interplay between inflation and microwave background anisotropies, stressing in particular the accuracy with which inflation predictions need to be made, and the importance of inflation as an underlying paradigm for…
Cosmology is at present one of the most powerful probes of neutrino properties. The advent of precision data from the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure has allowed for a very strong bound on the neutrino mass. Here, I…
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…
In the past decade, observational cosmology has had one of the most exciting periods in the past century. The precision with which we have been able to measure cosmological parameters has increased tremendously, while at the same time, we…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak gravitational lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-convergence…