Related papers: Understanding Our Universe: Current Status and Ope…
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…
Does inflation provide a compelling explanation for why the universe is so large, so flat, and so old, and a predictive theory of density perturbations? In this brief contribution (based on the role of the author as moderator of the…
An introduction to modern cosmology is given, focusing on theories for the origin of structure in the Universe. After a brief review of the theory of growth of cosmological perturbations and a summary of some important observational…
This article reviews the prevailing paradigm for how galaxies and larger structures formed in the universe: gravitational instability. Basic observational facts are summarized to motivate the standard cosmological framework underlying most…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
In these lectures I review the present status of the so-called Standard Cosmological Model, based on the hot Big Bang Theory and the Inflationary Paradigm. I will make special emphasis on the recent developments in observational cosmology,…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
In order to account for the observable Universe, any comprehensive theory or model of cosmology must draw from many disciplines of physics, including gauge theories of strong and weak interactions, the hydrodynamics and microphysics of…
I review the challenges and problems facing the standard cosmological model, involving an $\Omega=1$ Universe dominated by non-baryonic dark matter, which arise due to: age estimates of the universe, estimates of the baryon fraction of the…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
Cosmology and astroparticle physics give strongest possible evidence for the incompleteness of the Standard Model of particle physics. Leaving aside misterious dark energy, which may or may not be just the cosmological constant, two…
Despite its continued observational successes, there is a persistent (and growing) interest in extending cosmology beyond the standard model, $\Lambda$CDM. This is motivated by a range of apparently serious theoretical issues, involving…
For a few years now, cosmology has a standard model. By this term, we mean a consistent theoretical background which is at the same time simple and broad enough to offer coherent explanations for the vast majority of cosmological phenomena.…
Focus of these lectures is the challenge of explaining the origin of structure in the Universe. The interplay between quantum field theory and classical general relativity has given rise to several interesting cosmological models which…
Scientific cosmology has now reached its period of maturity with the establishment of a standard model, which is the theory of an expanding universe. The question of whether this expansion resolves itself, in the past, into a singularity…
A basic modern picture of the universe is given here. The lectures start from the historical ideas of a static universe. Then I move on to Newtonian cosmology and derive the main cosmological equations in the framework of Newtonian…