Related papers: Modern Cosmology
We discuss the potential cosmological role of gravitational wave astronomy as a probe of the very early universe. The next generation of detectors - now in production - may be able to observe a stochastic background of gravitational waves…
These lectures present a brief review of inflationary cosmology, provide an overview of the theory of cosmological perturbations, and then focus on the conceptual problems of the current paradigm of early universe cosmology, thus motivating…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
The temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a window back to the physics of the early universe. They encode the nature of the initial fluctuations and so can reveal much about the…
I explain the origin and evolution of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and argue that upcoming experiments will measure cosmological and fundamental parameters very accurately. Most of the paper focuses on present data,…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration is one of the most important developments in modern cosmology. The observation, thirteen years ago, that type Ia supernovae appear dimmer that they would have been in a decelerating universe followed by…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
The simplest explanation for early time acceleration (inflation) and the late time acceleration indicated by recent data is that they have a common origin. We investigate another generic cosmological implication of this possiblity, that 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,…
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…
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
The standard big bang cosmological model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions are summarized. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with…
Small fluctuations around homogeneous and isotropic expanding backgrounds are the main object of study in cosmology. Their origin and evolution is sensitive to the physical processes that happen during inflation and in the late Universe. As…
The particle production process is reviewed, through which cosmic inflation can produce a scale invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations of suitable fields starting from their quantum fluctuations. Afterwards, in the context of the…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the…
The aim of this thesis is to question some of the basic assumptions that go into building the $\Lambda$CDM model of our universe. The assumptions we focus on are the initial conditions of the universe, the fundamental forces in the universe…
The recent high-quality measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies have presented cosmologists with the possibility of studying the large scale properties of our universe with unprecedented precision. Here I review the…