Related papers: The New Cosmology
For the first time, we have a plausible and complete accounting of matter and energy in the Universe. Expressed a fraction of the critical density it goes like this: neutrinos, between 0.3% and 15%; stars, between 0.3% and 0.6%; baryons…
A cosmological model with total density close to critical (and flat geometry), dominated by dark matter and dark energy of unknown nature, and consistent with the basic predictions of the inflationary scenario is a very good fit to a…
Till the late nineties the accepted cosmological model was that of a Universe that had originated in the Big Bang and was now decelerating under the influence of as yet undetected dark matter, so that it would come to a halt and eventually…
The nature of dark matter and of dark energy which constitute more than $95\%$ of the energy in the Universe remains a great and unresolved question in cosmology. Cold dark matter can be made of an ultralight scalar field dominated by its…
A scenario of the inflaton evolution from cosmic inflation and matter creation to dark matter/dark energy today is presented. To start with, a model of the inflationary phase of the inflaton is introduced. The inflaton rolls down a hilltop…
In this work, we outline a new general relativistic cosmology. In this cosmology, the universe originates in the infinite past from sparsely distributed neutral matter and ends in the infinite future as a hot, relativistic plasma. The…
In these lectures I highlight some key features of massive neutrinos in the context of cosmology. I first review the thermal history and the free-streaming kinematics of the uniform cosmic background neutrinos. I then describe how…
The $\Lambda$-CDM model of cosmology has done much to clarify our picture of the early universe. However, there are still some questions that $\Lambda$-CDM does not necessarily answer; questions such as what is the fundamental nature of…
This essay is a nontechnical primer for a broader audience, in which I paint a broad-brush picture of modern cosmology. I begin by reviewing the evidence for the big bang, including the expansion of our Universe, the cosmic microwave…
We propose a simple model in which the cosmological dark matter consists of particles whose mass increases with the scale factor of the universe. The particle mass is generated by the expectation value of a scalar field which does not have…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…
It is conjectured that dark matter (DM) was produced before inflation from neutral particles present after the Big Bang and survived inflation due to a specific coupling with gravitation, while the charged particles existing after the Big…
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…
Quintessential inflation provides a unified description of inflation and dark energy in terms of a single scalar degree of freedom, the cosmon. We present here a comprehensive overview of this appealing paradigm, highlighting its key…
In these notes we present a selection of topics, each section approximately amounting to one lecture. We begin with a brief recapitulation of General Relativity, and the Standard Model of Cosmology. This is followed by lectures on important…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenge---a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe. I then discuss the motivations…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
Phantom Cosmology provides an unique opportunity to "connect" the phantom driven (low en- ergy meV scale) dark energy phase to the (high energy GUT scale) inflationary era. This is possible because the energy density increases in phantom…
Diverse cosmological and astrophysical observations strongly hint at the presence of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe. One of the main goals of Cosmology is to explain the nature of these two components. It may well be that both…
These lectures describe how the Standard Model of cosmology ($\Lambda$CDM) has developped, based on observational facts but also on ideas formed in the context of the theory of fundamental interactions, both gravitational and…