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
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(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
(very nice Cosmology and EU notes)
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