Contributions to the TASI-02 and TASI-03 summer schools.
Report-no: SU-GP-04/1-1
astro-ph/0401547
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TASI LECTURES: INTRODUCTION TO COSMOLOGY
Mark Trodden 1 and
Sean M. Carroll 2
1 Department of Physics,
Syracuse University,
Syracuse, NY 13244-1130, USA
2 Enrico
Fermi Institute,
Department of
Physics,
and Center for
Cosmological Physics,
University of
Chicago,
5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Abstract.
These proceedings summarize lectures that were delivered as part of
the 2002 and 2003 Theoretical Advanced Study Institutes in elementary
particle physics (TASI) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. They
are intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to cosmology aimed
at advanced graduate students in particle physics and string theory.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
- FUNDAMENTALS OF THE STANDARD COSMOLOGY
- Homogeneity and Isotropy: The Robertson-Walker
Metric
- Dynamics: The Friedmann Equations
- Flat Universes
- Including Curvature
- Horizons
- Geometry, Destiny and Dark Energy
- OUR UNIVERSE TODAY AND DARK ENERGY
- Matter: Ordinary and Dark
- Supernovae and the Accelerating Universe
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmological Constant Problem(s)
- Dark Energy, or Worse?
- EARLY TIMES IN THE STANDARD COSMOLOGY
- Describing Matter
- Particles in Equilibrium
- Thermal Relics
- Vacuum displacement
- Primordial Nucleosynthesis
- Finite Temperature Phase Transitions
- Topological Defects
- Baryogenesis
- Baryon Number Violation
- INFLATION
- The Flatness Problem
- The Horizon Problem
- Unwanted Relics
- The General Idea of Inflation
- Slowly-Rolling Scalar Fields
- Attractor Solutions in Inflation
- Solving the Problems of the Standard Cosmology
- Vacuum Fluctuations and Perturbations
- Reheating and Preheating
- The Beginnings of Inflation
- REFERENCES
