ASTR 5770 Fall 2023 Texts

ASTR 5770 Cosmology Fall 2023: Texts

The lectures in this course will be based to a considerable extent on the proto-book

Some hand-written notes:

The lectures will also use

Scott Dodelson & Fabian Schmidt (2020) “Modern Cosmology, 2nd Ed.” Academic Press, 494 pages. A hard copy of the book is available in the APS Office.
This is a superb, pedagogically written, graduate level exposition of the pillars of modern cosmology, especially the Cosmic Microwave Background. If you want to learn the subject, this is the book. The second edition is similar to the first (2003), somewhat reorganized, with significant new material on CMB lensing, and on Large Scale Structure.

Scott Dodelson (2017) “Gravitational Lensing”, Cambridge University Press, 224 pages. Another good resource. Gravitational lensing sees mass regardless of whether the mass is bright (stars) or not (dark matter), which makes it a powerful probe of dark matter in the Universe.
T. Padmanabhan (2010) “Gravitation: Foundations and Frontiers”, Cambridge University Press, 700 pages, includes chapters on the CMB power spectrum.
David H. Lyth & Andrew R. Liddle (2009) “The Primordial Density Perturbation”, Cambridge University Press, 497 pages.
Steven Weinberg (2008) “Cosmology”, Oxford University Press, 593 pages. I get the impression that Weinberg is focused more on teaching himself than the reader as he cranks through all the equations in gory detail. On the other hand Weinberg is comprehensive, and his views are magisterial. For example, on page 476 he addresses how quantum fluctuations must somehow decohere to become the classical fluctuations we see today, an issue I have not seen mentioned in any other text.

Updated 2023 Sep 1