Ast/Phys 5022 - Cosmology (Fall 2012)

Syllabus & Grading

Lecture Notes

  • Relativity, Maxwell's Eqs & Lorentz Invariance, Newton vs EM vs GR
  • Global Geometry
  • Inflation
  • Early Universe and Thermal History
  • Gravitational Instability - Jeans analysis
  • Cosmic Microwave Background
  • CMB acoustic peaks - PPT slides
  • Structure Formation
  • Structure Formation - PPT slides

    Resources

    astro-ph: preprint archive
    NASA ADS paper archive
    Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial
    Brief history of the Universe -1
    Brief history of the Universe - 2
    Euclid's Five Postulates

    Global Cosmological Parameters

    Dynamical evolution of various models: Flat; no Lambda; with Lambda
    Supernova Cosmology Project
    Expansion age for various universe models
    Angular diameter distances for various universe models
    Particle and Event Horizons in 2 models
    astro-ph/0603449, WMAP results; see p.28, p.54, p.57, p.58
    astro-ph/0409131, "The current status of observational cosmology" see p.6
    see the last picture: P(k) from CMB and galaxy clustering

    Methods of measuring the Hubble constant, H0

    Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect
    Galaxy Gravitational Lenses
    Water Masers (see 1st talk, p.9)
    Distance Ladder
    Distance Ladder - summary of methods
    Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
    Gravitational lensing time delays (see p.10,11,12)
    Summary of H0 estimates, arXiv:0802.3219 (p.24)

    Density Fluctuation in the Universe

    2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey
    Two micron all sky galaxy survey
    A compilation of things, by Martin White (UCB)
    A popular-level version of P(k); M.Tegmark
    Matter Power Spectrum: astro-ph/0608632, see p.31
    Matter Power Spectrum: astro-ph/0603449, see p.24

    Early Universe

    Time line, from Kolb and Turner
    Dark Matter (Direct detection) Limits on WIMP mass and cross-section
    Dark Matter (not Early Universe) "Bullet Cluster"
    Parity Violation - an article from Los Alamos Science
    CERN site
    Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN):
    Abundance vs. baryon/photon ratio
    Helium mass fraction
    BBN predictions vs. observations + CMB (see p.51)
    He-4,D,He-3,Li-7

    Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

    All things CMB
    WMAP sky maps and power spectra
    CMB spectral energy distribution and the Planck curve
    CMB quadrupole and octapole (p.13, Tegmark et al.)
    Visualizing spherical harmonics
    First few spherical harmonics
    CMB's cosmological parameter dependencies, p.5 (Baumann, Peiris)
    Wayne Hu's CMB pages