Related papers: Big Bang riddles and their revelations
Cosmological inflation and topological defects have been considered for a long time, either in disagreement or in competition. On the one hand an inflationary era is required to solve the shortcomings of the hot big bang model, while on the…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
This contribution intends to give a pedagogical introduction to the topic of dark energy (the mysterious agent supposed to drive the observed late time acceleration of the Universe) and to various observational tests which require only…
This is one chapter of the collection of problems in cosmology, in which we assemble the problems, with solutions, that concern one of the most distinctive features of general relativity and cosmology---the horizons. The first part gives an…
I review the current status of Big Bang Cosmology, with emphasis on current issues in dark matter, dark energy, and galaxy formation. These topics motivate many of the current goals of experimental cosmology which range from targeting the…
We consider different aspects of the problem of cosmological singularity such as the BKL oscillatory approach to the singularity, the new features of the cosmological dynamics in the neighbourhood of the singularity in multidimensional and…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
The great advances in the network of cosmological tests show that the relativistic Big Bang theory is a good description of our expanding universe. But the properties of nearby galaxies that can be observed in greatest detail suggest a…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
Despite two decades of tremendous experimental and theoretical progress, the riddle of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains to be solved. On the experimental side, our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the…
The first part of this paper contains a brief description of the beginnings of modern cosmology, which, the author will argue, was most likely born in the Year 1912. Some of the pieces of evidence presented here have emerged from recent…
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed:…
We consider the cosmological application of a (variant of) relatively newly proposed model \cite{1609.06915} unifying inflation, dark energy, dark matter, and the Higgs mechanism. The model was originally defined using additional…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
One of the main challenges in cosmology is to quantify how small density fluctuations at the recombination epoch z around 1000 evolved into the galaxies and the large-scale structure we observe in the universe today. This thesis discusses…
Cosmology now provides unambiguous, quantitative evidence for new particle physics. I discuss the implications of cosmology for supersymmetry and vice versa. Topics include: motivations for supersymmetry; supersymmetry breaking; dark…