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Astronomy 627: Cosmology
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Maintained by LG
- The observational context: Cosmic microwave background Radiation, Hubble expansion, galaxies, dark matter, clustering properties of galaxies, large-scale structure, peculiar velocities, deviations from isotropic Hubble flow, light element abundances.
- The theory of gravitation: Difficulties with Newtonian gravitation, Mach's Principle, isotropic curved spaces, special relativity, 4-vectors, covariant formulation of electrodynamics, outline of general relativity, Einstein field equations.
- The "standard" cosmological models: Cosmological principles, Robertson-Walker metric, measurements of distances, luminosities, angular sizes, Friedman models, anthropic principle and Dirac's large numbers.
- Thermal history of the Universe: Radiation-dominated expansion, recombination, fluctuations.
- Big-Bang nucleosynthesis: Nuclear statistical equilibrium in the early Universe, light element synthesis, baryon and lepton asymmetry.
- Inflationary cosmology: Expansion, flatness, horizon, equation of state, fluctuation spectrum.
- Galaxy formation: Jeans' instability, growth of density perturbations,, dissipation processes, fluctuations in baryonic and nonbaryonic matter, hot and cold dark matter models, measured clustering spectra, peculiar velocity fields.
- CMB Fluctuations: Gravitational, adiabatic, and Doppler perturbations, multipole expansion, angular structure, reheating, Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect, anisotropies.
- Evolution of galaxies:Nonlinear collapse of density perturbations, hierarchical clustering, source counts, background radiation.
- Evolution of star formation rates and element abundances: Lyman-alpha clouds, star-forming galaxies out to large redshifts, cosmic chemical evolution.
This outline is representative only, and is likely to change from instructor to instructor and from year to year.
Recent instructors
- István Szapudi — 2004, 2006, 2008, 2013
- Bob Joseph — 2002
- John Tonry — 2000