Final assessment by means of written and/or oral exams.
Learning
objectives
To provide in-depth knowledge of the origins and evolution of the Universe within the framework of General Relativity, as well as of astronomical and astrophysical measurements of significant cosmological interest.
Contents
Elements of General Relativity. Cosmological principle. Hubble’s law. Redshift. Deceleration parameter. Standard model: Friedmann equations, closed and open universes. Standard candles and cosmic clocks. Cosmological distance ladder. Primary, secondary and tertiary distance indicators. Lookback time. Bias factors and observational corrections. Estimates of the age of the Universe and estimation methods. Thermal history of the Universe. Cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Nucleosynthesis: baryon fraction and abundance of H and He. Dark matter. Clustering properties of the Universe. Correlation function of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Large-scale structure and the main surveys of galaxies, quasars and galaxy clusters. Structure formation: Jeans theory of perturbations in a static fluid. Outline of the initial distribution problem: Harrison-Zel’dovich spectrum. Dark energy and cosmological constant Λ: static universe. Λ as vacuum energy. Scalar field and inflation: problems of the standard model and quintessence. Exponential or power-law expansion. Quadratic potential: reheating and solution of the entropy problem. CMBR anisotropy. Spherical harmonic expansion. Boomerang, WMAP and PLANCK experiments.
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