Related papers: The First Cosmic Structures and their Effects
Topological defects are common in many everyday systems. In general, they appear if a symmetry is broken at a rapid phase transition. In this article, I explain why it is believed that they should have also been formed in the early universe…
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…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
Recent results indicate the presence of a cosmological constant (or related dark energy) in the universe. It has been conjectured recently that the interaction parameters of physical theories may be dependant on the size parameter of the…
In recent years, unprecedented progress in observational cosmology has revealed a great deal of information about the formation and evolution of structures in the universe. This, in turn, has raised many challenging issues for the…
We review the possible mechanisms for the generation of cosmological magnetic fields, discuss their evolution in an expanding Universe filled with the cosmic plasma and provide a critical review of the literature on the subject. We put…
This paper reviews selected aspects of the growth of cosmological structure, covering the following general areas: (1) expected characteristics of linear density perturbations according to various candidate theories for the origin of…
We review recent theoretical results on the formation of the first stars and quasars in the universe, and emphasize related open questions. In particular, we list important differences between the star formation process at high redshifts…
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…
If our universe has appeared in a result of Big Bang or something like this, whether we have reasons to deny an existence of other universes appearing by the same or similar way? An objection that there is no anything like it, is doubtful,…
The first stars were key drivers of early cosmic evolution. We review the main physical elements of the current consensus view, positing that the first stars were predominantly very massive. We continue with a discussion of important open…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
The primary concern of this thesis is to understand the formation and properties of the first galaxies, as well as the influence of the first stars in terms of radiative, mechanical and chemical feedback. In particular, we elucidate the…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in condensed-matter physics but only hypothetical in the early universe. In spite of this, even an indirect evidence for one of these cosmic objects would revolutionize our vision of the cosmos. We give…
The changes of main paradigms on the structure and evolution of the Universe are reviewed. Two puzzles of the modern cosmology, the mean density of matter and the regularity of the Universe on large scales, as well as the possibility to…
What is the shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite ? Is space multi-connected to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? After a "dark age" period, the field of cosmic topology has now become one of the major concerns in…
In spite of significant recent and ongoing research efforts, most of the early evolution and long-term fate of young massive star clusters remain clouded in uncertainties. Here, I discuss our understanding of the initial conditions of star…
Cosmological constant a.k.a. dark energy problem is considered to be one major challenge in modern cosmology. Here we present a model where large scale structure formation causes spatially-flat FRW universe to fragment into numerous `FRW…
In this introductory chapter of the Special Issue entitled `The Structure and Evolution of Stars', we highlight the recent major progress made in our understanding in the physics that governs stellar interiors. In so doing, we combine…