Related papers: The Cosmological Parameters
I will discuss the recent LHC and Planck results, which are completely compatible with the Standard Model of particle physics, and the standard cosmological model ($\Lambda$CDM), respectively. It turns out that the extension of the Standard…
The flat matter dominated Universe that dominated cosmological model building for much of the past 20 years does not correspond to the Universe in which we live. This has profound implications both for our understanding of dark matter, and…
Cosmology can be viewed as geodesic motion in an appropriate metric on an `augmented' target space; here we obtain these geodesics from an effective relativistic particle action. As an application, we find some exact (flat and curved)…
The standard $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model provides an amazing description of a wide range of astrophysical and astronomical data. However, there are a few big open questions, that make the standard model look like a…
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…
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…
Six challenges for the standard cosmological model $\Lambda$CDM are listed, which arise when comparing theoretical predictions with observational data on scales of ~1 Mpc. Different parameters of luminous and dwarf galaxies in the local…
An overview is provided of the singularity theorems in cosmological contexts at a level suitable for advanced graduate students. The necessary background from tensor and causal geometry to understand the theorems is supplied, the…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
General Relativity and the $\Lambda$CDM framework are currently the standard lore and constitute the concordance paradigm. Nevertheless, long-standing open theoretical issues, as well as possible new observational ones arising from the…
Cosmography represents an important branch of cosmology which aims to describe the universe without the need of postulating \emph{a priori} any particular cosmological model. All quantities of interest are expanded as a Taylor series around…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
Various contributions to the cosmological constant are discussed and confronted with its recent measurement. We briefly review different scenarious -- and their difficulties -- for a solution of the cosmological constant problem.
We review current theoretical cosmology, including fundamental and mathematical cosmology and physical cosmology (as well as cosmology in the quantum realm), with an emphasis on open questions.
We use astrophysical data to shed light on fundamental physics by constraining parametrized theoretical cosmological and gravitational models. Gravitational parameters are those constants that parametrize possible departures from Einstein's…
It has become common to call this the "era of precision cosmology," and hence one rarely hears about the finiteness of the amount of information that is available for constraining cosmological parameters. Under the assumption that the…
We define an optimal basis system into which cosmological observables can be decomposed. The basis system can be optimised for a specific cosmological model or for an ensemble of models, even if based on drastically different physical…
Anthropic models can give testable predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified at a specified confidence level. This is illustrated using the successful prediction of the cosmological constant as an example. The history and the nature…
In this review, the formation, evolution, and decay of the large-scale structure of the Universe is discussed in the context of observational data, numerical simulations, and the Cosmological Standard Model (CSM). Problems concerning…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…