Lecture Notes in Cosmology / by Oliver Piattella.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Piattella, Oliver., Author.

Series:

UNITEXT for Physics, 2198-7882

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cosmology.

Gravitation.

Classical and Quantum Gravitation, Relativity Theory.

Local Subjects:

Cosmology.

Classical and Quantum Gravitation, Relativity Theory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (XVIII, 418 p. 53 illus., 23 illus. in color.)

Edition:

1st ed. 2018.

Place of Publication:

Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2018.

Summary:

Cosmology has become a very active research field in the last decades thanks to the impressing improvement of our observational techniques which have led to landmark discoveries such as the accelerated expansion of the universe, and have put physicists in front of new mysteries to unveil, such as the quest after the nature of dark matter and dark energy. These notes offer an approach to cosmology, covering fundamental topics in the field: the expansion of the universe, the thermal history, the evolution of small cosmological perturbations and the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Some extra topics are presented in the penultimate chapter and some standard results of physics and mathematics are available in the last chapter in order to provide a self-contained treatment. These notes offer an in-depth account of the above-mentioned topics and are aimed to graduate students who want to build an expertise in cosmology.

Contents:

Preface

Notation

Cosmology

The expanding universe and its content

Cosmological observations

Redshift

Open problems in cosmology

The universe in expansion

Newtonian cosmology

Relativistic cosmology

Friedmann equations

Solutions of the Friedmann equations

Distances in cosmology

Thermal history

Thermal equilibrium and Boltzmann equation

Short summary of thermal history

The distribution function

The entropy density

Photons

Neutrinos

Boltzmann equation

Boltzmann equation with a collisional term

Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis

Recombination and decoupling

Cosmological perturbations

From the perturbations of the FLRW metric to the linearised Einstein tensor

Perturbation of the energy-momentum tensor

The problem of the gauge and gauge transformations

Normal mode decomposition

Einstein equations for scalar perturbations

Einstein equations for tensor perturbations

Einstein equations for vector perturbations

Perturbed Boltzmann equations

General form of the perturbed Boltzmann equation

Force term

The perturbed Boltzmann equation for CDM

The perturbed Boltzmann equation for massless neutrinos

The perturbed Boltzmann equation for photons

Boltzmann equation for baryons

Initial conditions

Evolution equations in the kn^Inflation

The flatness problem

The horizon problem

Single scalar field slow-roll inflation

Production of gravitational waves during inflation

Production of scalar perturbations during inflation

Spectral indices

Observational results

Examples of models of inflation

Evolution of perturbations

Evolution on super-horizon scales

The matter-dominated epoch

The radiation-dominated epoch

Deep inside the horizon

Matching and CDM transfer function

The transfer function for tensor perturbations

Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Free-streaming

Anisotropies on large scales

Tight-coupling and acoustic oscillations

Diffusion damping

Line-of-sight integration

Finite thickness effect and reionization

Cosmological parameters determination

Tensor contribution to the CMB TT correlation

Polarisation

Miscellanea

Bayesian analysis using type Ia supernovae data

Doing statistics in the sky

Appendices

Thermal distributions

Derivation of the Poisson distribution

Helmholtz theorem

Conservation of R on large scales and for adiabatic perturbations

Spherical harmonics

Method of Green’s functions

Thomson scattering

Bibliography

Subject Index.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

3-319-95570-5