Related papers: Advanced Topics in Cosmology: A Pedagogical Introd…
A brief review of the present-day development of cosmology is presented for mixed physical audience. The universe history is briefly described. Unsolved problems are discussed, in particular, the mystery of the cosmological constant and…
A short pedagogical overview of cosmological perturbation theory, following the lectures given during the brazilian school of cosmology held in August 2012. Topics treated are: I. The background II. SVT decomposition and the gauge issue.…
A brief introduction to the gauge invariant classical and quantum theory of cosmological perturbations is given. The formalism is applied to inflationary Universe models and yields a consistent and unified description of the generation and…
We present a pedagogical and phenomenological introduction to the study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization to build intuition about the prospects and challenges facing its detection. Thomson scattering of temperature…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
We present a brief review of Cosmological Inflation from the personal perspective of the author who almost 30 years ago proposed a way of resolving the problem of Cosmological Horizon by employing certain notions and developments from the…
After a brief review of the theory of cosmological perturbations, I highlight some recent progress in the area of reheating in inflationary cosmology, focusing in particular on parametric amplification of super-Hubble cosmological…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not addressed by the standard cosmology and…
Alan Guth introduced cosmologists to inflation at the 1980 Texas Symposium. Since, inflation has had almost as much impact on cosmology as the big-bang model itself. However, unlike the big-bang model, it has little observational support.…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…
Cosmology is nowadays going through a true revolution in the quantity and quality of observations that are capable of providing crucial information about the origin and evolution of the universe. In the first years of the next millenium we…
In this series of lectures we review observational evidence for, and theoretical investigations into, cosmic acceleration and dark energy. The notes are in four sections. First I review the basic cosmological formalism to describe the…
Perturbations from inflation evolve into large scale structure of the late universe, and encode abundant cosmic structure formation physics. We allow freedom in the primordial power spectrum, rather than assuming a power law scale…
We review the theory of inflationary perturbations. Perturbations at both linear and nonlinear orders are reviewed. We also review a variety of inflation models, emphasizing their signatures on cosmic perturbations.
Several lectures for non-experts on equilibrium and non-equilibrium kinetics in expanding universe are presented. An establishment of thermal equilibrium in the ealry universe as well as mechanisms leading to deviations from the equilibrium…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is extended to spacetimes displaying isotropic expansion but anisotropic curvature. The perturbed Einstein equation and Boltzmann equations for massless and massive particles are derived in a general…
This review on dark energy is intended for a wider audience, beginners as well as experts. It contains important notes on various aspects of dark energy and its alternatives. The section on Newtonian cosmology followed by heuristic…
We present a simplified review of inflationary cosmology across various modified gravity theories. These include models based on curvature, torsion, and non-metricity. We explore how scalar fields interact with different geometric…
The transition from the end of inflation to a hot, thermal Universe, commonly referred to as (re)heating, is a critical yet often misunderstood phase in early Universe cosmology. This short review aims to provide a comprehensive,…
In principle, the tensor metric (gravity-wave) perturbations that arise in inflationary models can, beyond probing the underlying inflationary model, provide information about the Universe: ionization history, presence of a cosmological…