Related papers: Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies up to Sec…
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…
We present a simple, yet accurate approximation for calculating the cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectrum in adiabatic models. It consists of solving for the evolution of a two-fluid model until the epoch of recombination…
We obtain the equation governing the evolution of the cosmological gravitational-wave background, accounting for the presence of cosmic neutrinos, up to second order in perturbation theory. In particular, we focus on the epoch during…
The Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies predicted by two cosmological models are compared, one of them is the standard model of general relativity with cold dark matter and cosmological constant, whereas the second model is based…
We solve the Boltzmann equation for cosmological neutrinos around the epoch of the electron-positron annihilation in order to verify the freeze-out approximation and to compute accurately the cosmological neutrino distribution function. We…
Early reionization changes the pattern of anisotropies expected in the cosmic microwave background. To explore these changes, we derive from first principles the equations governing anisotropies, focusing on the interactions of photons with…
Cosmological perturbation theory is crucial for our understanding of the universe. The linear theory has been well understood for some time, however developing and applying the theory beyond linear order is currently at the forefront of…
Cosmology requires new physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles and fields. What is the fundamental physics behind dark matter and dark energy? What generated the initial fluctuations in the early Universe? Polarised light…
We study second order gravitational effects of local inhomogeneities on the cosmic microwave background radiation in flat universes with matter and a cosmological constant $\Lambda$. We find that the general relativistic correction to the…
Primordially formed extended dark objects would accrete baryonic matter and impact the ionisation history of the Universe. Insisting on consistency with the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, we derive constraints on the dark…
The anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) induced by the scalar and tensor metric perturbations are computed in the long-wavelength limit. It is found that the large-scale polarization of CMBR…
We present an analysis of the cosmological evolution of matter sources with small anisotropic pressures. This includes electric and magnetic fields, collisionless relativistic particles, gravitons, antisymmetric axion fields in low-energy…
I review in these lectures our present understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, making emphasis on the most recent observations of the acceleration of the universe, the precise measurements of the microwave background…
Since the IAU XXIV meeting in 2000, the CMB anisotropy has matured from being one of a number of cosmological probes to forming the bedrock foundation for what is now the standard model of cosmology. The large advances over the past three…
We discuss the time dependence and future of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the context of the standard cosmological model, in which we are now entering a state of endless accelerated expansion. The mean temperature will simply…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
Fluctuations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have now been detected over a wide range of angular scales, and a consistent picture seems to be emerging. This article describes some of the implications for cosmology.…
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…
Anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have been detected on a range of scales by several different experiments. These anisotropies reflect the primordial spectrum of metric perturbations in the early universe.…
The genuine quantum gravity effects can already be around us. It is likely that the observed large-angular-scale anisotropies in the microwave background radiation are induced by cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. Such…