Meeting Times:
School's out (but not forever)
Location: Registered students should contact me for the course location
Course Outline
- Intro/overview
- The smooth expanding Universe
- Thermodynamics and expansion
- Beyond equilibrium: Nucleosynthesis, Freeze-out, Recombination
- Cosmological perturbations
- Inflation
- Cosmic rays and neutrinos
- Dark matter detection
- gravitational waves (?)
Assignments
Assignments are on holiday
Reading
Notes
Part 1: Expansion, Thermodynamics
(high-contrast version)
Part 2: Boltzmann Equation, BBN
(high-contrast version)
Direct detection of Dark matter
Indirect detection of dark matter
Part 3: Cosmological perturbations I (high-contrast version)
Part 4: Perturbations II
(high-contrast version)
References I will be drawing from
S. Dodelson, Modern Cosmology
E. Kolb and M. Turner, The Early Universe
V. Mukhanov, Physical Foundations of Cosmology
Sigl, Astroparticle Physics: Theory and Phenomenology
Some online resources
Edmond Bertschinger’s Introduction to Tensor Calculus for GR
Antony Lewis’s Homepage (very nice Cosmology and EU notes)
Julien Lesgourgues’s TASI lectures on perturbations
LCDM Cosmology for Astronomers
General Course Information
Required text: You are not required to purchase a textbook, but since I will be drawing most heavily on Dodelson, I recommend having a copy on hand. My handwritten course notes will be posted here semi-regularly.
Prerequisites
There are no specific course prerequisites. Since this is a graduate course, you will be expected to have some background experience in special relativity, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics.
Evaluation
- 4-5 Problem sets (65%)
- 10% Participation in class + reading and discussion of selected papers. I’ll ask for a short summary + some questions in advance each time.
- 25% Final project + presentation