Related papers: Understanding Our Universe: Current Status and Ope…
Modern cosmology has created a tight link between particle physics / field theory and a wealth of new observational data on the structure of the Universe. These lecture notes focus on some of the most important aspects concerning the…
An elementary survey of mathematical cosmology is presented. We cover certain key ideas and developments in a qualitative way, from the time of the Einstein static universe in 1917 until today. We divide our presentation into four main…
The discovery of the present accelerated expansion of space changed everything regarding cosmology and life's ultimate prospects. Both the optimistic scenarios of an ever (but decelerated) expanding universe and of a collapsing universe…
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 contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
The universe we observe is homogeneous on super-horizon scales, leading to the ``cosmic homogeneity problem''. Inflation alleviates this problem but cannot solve it within the realm of conservative extrapolations of classical physics. A…
An accelerated universe should naturally have a vacuum energy density determined by its dynamical curvature. The cosmological constant is most likely a temporary description of a dynamical variable that has been drastically evolving from…
Cosmology today is confronted with several seemingly insoluble puzzles and strange, inexplicable coincidences. But a careful re-examination of the Cosmological principle and the Weyl postulate, foundational elements in this subject,…
We review the status of bouncing cosmologies as alternatives to cosmological inflation for providing a description of the very early universe, and a source for the cosmological perturbations which are observed today. We focus on the…
These notes form an introduction to cosmology with special emphasis on large scale structure, the cmb anisotropy and inflation. In some places a basic familiarity with particle physics is assumed, but otherwise no special knowledge is…
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…
Based on several recent developments in relativistic astrophysics and observational cosmology, this article discusses prospects of (1) theoretical structure of General Relativity (GR) in the new era and (2) submission of GR to new and…
We investigate the cosmological behavior in a universe governed by time asymmetric extensions of general relativity, which is a novel modified gravity based on the addition of new, time-asymmetric, terms on the Hamiltonian framework, in a…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
Universe structure emerges in the unreduced, complex-dynamical interaction process with the simplest initial configuration (two attracting homogeneous fields). The unreduced interaction analysis avoiding any perturbative model gives…
Modern astrophysical and cosmological models are plagued with two severe theoretical difficulties, namely, the dark energy and the dark matter problems. Relative to the former, high-precision observational data have confirmed with startling…
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it…
While the LCDM framework has been incredibly successful for modern cosmology, it requires the admission of two mysterious substances as a part of the paradigm, dark energy and dark matter. Although this framework adequately explains most of…
This is the dawning of the age of precision cosmology, when all the important parameters will be established to one significant figure or better, within the cosmological model. In the age of accurate cosmology the model, which nowadays…
There is a deep cosmological mystery: although dependent on very different underlying physics, the timescales of structure formation, of galaxy cooling (both radiatively and against the CMB), and of vacuum domination do not differ by many…