syllabus | timetable | problems | notes |
During the semester you will develop by steps, with increasing level of sophistication, a computer program (I recommend Mathematica) to calculate the power spectrum of matter (galaxies) and of the CMB. The computation is a glorious application of intricately interwoven threads of physics. The arena in which the action takes place is general relativistic perturbation theory on a homogeneous, isotropic (Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker) spacetime. The players in the arena are non-baryonic dark matter, baryons, photons, neutrinos, and dark energy, interacting by gravity and, in the case of baryons and photons, by electron-photon (Thomson) scattering.
Warning: This is a graduate-level course that will require a serious amount of work on your part. I will cover the mathematics and physics as needed (including the general relativity), but in the lectures I will often have to fast-forward over details, which you can read more about in the notes or the recommended text.
In lieu of a final program, or in addition to it, you may choose to give a 20 minute presentation, followed by questions, in class, at any time during the semester, on a paper on any aspect of cosmology from the arXiv (astro-ph.CO) in recent years. You will need to book with me in advance a time slot for your presentation. First come, first served.
If you choose to do both the program final and a presentation, your final grade will be the better of the grades for the program and the presentation.
Problem Sets | 80% |
Final/Presentation | 20% |
syllabus | timetable | problems | notes |
Updated 2014 Aug 25