Related papers: Cosmology as a Problem in Critical Phenomena
Cosmology is becoming an important tool to test particle physics models. We provide an overview of the standard model of cosmology with an emphasis on the observations relevant for testing fundamental physics.
The aim of these lecture notes is to familiarize graduate students and beginning postgraduates with the basic ideas of linear cosmological perturbation theory and of structure formation scenarios. We present both the Newtonian and the…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
We have critically compared different approaches to the cosmological constant problem, which is at the edge of elementary particle physics and cosmology. This problem is deeply connected with the difficulties formulating a theory of quantum…
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…
The gravitino problem is revisited in the framework of cosmological models in which the primordial cosmic matter is described by a relativistic imperfect fluid. Dissipative effects (or bulk viscosity effects) arise owing to the different…
Cosmological perturbation theory is a key tool to study the universe. The linear or first order theory is well understood, however, developing and applying the theory beyond linear order is at the cutting edge of current research in…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
The extra space paradigm plays a significant role in modern physics and in cosmology as the specific case. In this review, the relation between the main cosmological parameters - Planck mass and Cosmological constants - and a metric of…
I discuss some central issues in particle physics which are potentially relevant to cosmology. I first briefly review the present (glorious) experimental status of the Standard Model, emphasizing that it provides a firm foundation both for…
Getting signatures of quantum gravity is one of the topical lines of research in modern theoretical physics and cosmology. This short review faces this challenge under a novel perspective. Instead of separating quantum-gravity effects of a…
We review some aspects of quantum gravity in the context of cosmology. In particular, we focus on models with a phenomenology accessible to current and near-future observations, as the early Universe might be our only chance to peep through…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Cosmology is a field of physics in which the use of General Relativity theory is indispensable. However, a cosmology based on Newtonian gravity theory for gravity is possible in certain circumstances. The applicability of Newtonian theory…
Loop quantum cosmology is an application of recent developments for a non-perturbative and background independent quantization of gravity to a cosmological setting. Characteristic properties of the quantization such as discreteness of…
In these notes we present a selection of topics, each section approximately amounting to one lecture. We begin with a brief recapitulation of General Relativity, and the Standard Model of Cosmology. This is followed by lectures on important…
Various contributions to the cosmological constant are discussed and confronted with its recent measurement. We briefly review different scenarious -- and their difficulties -- for a solution of the cosmological constant problem.
Quantum cosmology has traditionally been studied at the level of symmetry-reduced minisuperspace models, analyzing the behavior of wave functions. However, in the absence of a complete full setting of quantum gravity and detailed knowledge…
We review several aspects of clusters of galaxies and their application to cosmology. We present first results of numerical simulations of the dynamics of the intra-cluster gas and of different interaction processes between cluster galaxies…
Cosmology presents us with several puzzles that are related to the fundamental structure of quantum theory. We discuss three such puzzles, linking them to effects that arise in black hole physics. We speculate that puzzles in cosmology may…