Cosmology and the Early Universe
Series in Astronomy and Astrophysics Series

This book discusses cosmology from both an observational and a strong theoretical perspective. The first part focuses on gravitation, notably the expansion of the universe and determination of cosmological parameters, before moving onto the main emphasis of the book, the physics of the early universe, and the connections between cosmological models and particle physics. The book provides links with particle physics and with investigations of the theories beyond the Standard Model, especially in connection to dark matter and matter-antimatter asymmetry puzzles.

Readers will gain a comprehensive account of cosmology and the latest observational results, without requiring prior knowledge of relativistic theories, making the text ideal for students.

Features:

• Provides a self-contained discussion of modern cosmology results without requiring any prior knowledge of relativistic theories, enabling students to learn the first rudiments needed for a rigorous comprehension of cosmological concepts
• Contains a timely discussion of the latest cosmological results, including those from WMAP and the Planck satellite, and discuss the cosmological applications of the Nobel Prize 2017 awarded discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO interferometer and the very high energy neutrinos discovered by the IceCube detector
• Includes original figures complementing mathematical derivations and accounting for the most important cosmological observations, in addition to a wide variety of problems with a full set of solutions discussed in detail in an accompanying solutions manual (available upon qualifying course adoption)

To view the errata please visit the authors personal webpage.

Section I: Cosmology. Chapter 1: Historical breakthroughs. Chapter 2: Fundamental observations. Chapter 3: A Newtonian Cosmology?. Chapter 4: From Classical Mechanics to Relativistic Theories. Chapter 5: Geometry of the universe. Chapter 6: Dynamics of the universe. Chapter 7: Building a cosmological model. Chapter 8: The cosmological constant. Chapter 9: Age of the universe. Chapter 10: Expansion history of the universe. Chapter 11: Matter. Section II: The early universe. Chapter 12: The cosmic microwave background. Chapter 13: Radiation-dominated regime. Chapter 14: Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Chapter 15: Inflation. Chapter 16: ACDM model and cosmological puzzles. Chapter 17: Dark matter

Pasquale Di Bari is a Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, UK.