Fundamental Parameters In Cosmology

Driven by discoveries, and enabled by leaps in technology and imagination, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically during the course of the last few decades. The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are making new connections to physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based on a broad and comprehensive survey of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines a plan for ground- and space- based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010's. Realizing these scientific opportunities is contingent upon maintaining and strengthening the foundations of the research enterprise including technological development, theory, computation and data handling, laboratory experiments, and human resources. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics proposes enhancing innovative but moderate-cost programs in space and on the ground that will enable the community to respond rapidly and flexibly to new scientific discoveries. The book recommends beginning construction on survey telescopes in space and on the ground to investigate the nature of dark energy, as well as the next generation of large ground-based giant optical telescopes and a new class of space-based gravitational observatory to observe the merging of distant black holes and precisely test theories of gravity. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics recommends a balanced and executable program that will support research surrounding the most profound questions about the cosmos. The discoveries ahead will facilitate the search for habitable planets, shed light on dark energy and dark matter, and aid our understanding of the history of the universe and how the earliest stars and galaxies formed. The book is a useful resource for agencies supporting the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over those agencies, the scientific community, and the public.

A self-contained introduction to general relativity that is based on the homogeneity and isotropy of the local universe. Emphasis is placed on estimations of the densities of matter and vacuum energy, and on investigations of the primordial density fluctuations and the nature of dark matter.

Enormous progress has been made in inflationary cosmology in the past few years and this book is the first to provide a modern and unified overview of the subject. Coverage examines every aspect of inflationary cosmology and carefully compares predictions with the latest observations, including those of the cosmic microwave background, the clustering and velocities of galaxies and the epoch of structure formation. Problems are included throughout to help the student develop a thorough understanding. An ideal introduction to what promises to be one of the most fruitful topics of research in science in the next decade, this volume will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, theoretical physics and applied mathematics.

An advanced text for senior undergraduates, graduate students and physical scientists in fields outside cosmology. This is a self-contained book focusing on the linear theory of the evolution of density perturbations in the universe, and the anisotropiesin the cosmic microwave background.

This book guides readers (astronomers, physicists, and university students) through central questions of Practical Cosmology, a term used by the late Allan Sandage to denote the modern scientific endeavor to find the cosmological model best describing the universe of galaxies, its geometry, size, age, and matter composition. The authors draw on their personal experience in astrophysics and cosmology to explain key concepts of cosmology, both observational and theoretical, and to highlight several items which give cosmology its special character. These highlighted items are: Ideosyncratic features of the “cosmic laboratory”, Malmquist bias in the determination of cosmic distances, Theory of gravitation as a cornerstone of cosmological models, Crucial tests for checking the reality of space expansion, Methods of analyzing the structures of the universe as mapped by galaxies, Usefulness of fractals as a model to describe the large-scale structure and new cosmological physics inherent in the Friedmann world model.

This NATO Advanced Study Institute course provided an updated understanding, from a fundamental and deep point of view, of the progress and current problems in the early universe, cosmic microwave background radiation, large-scale struc ture, dark matter problem, and the interplay between them. Emphasis was placed on the mutual impact of fundamental physics and cosmology, both at the theo retical and experimental or observational levels, within a deep and well defined programme, and a global unifying view, which, in addition, provides of careful inter-disciplinarity. In addition, each course of this series introduced and promoted topics or sub jects which, although not of a purely astrophysical or cosmological nature, were of relevant physical interest for astrophysics and cosmology. Deep understanding, clarification, synthesis, and careful interdisciplinarity within a fundamental physics framework, were the main goals of the course. Lectures ranged from a motivation and pedagogical introduction for students and participants not directly working in the field to the latest developments and most recent results. All lectures were plenary, had the same duration, and were followed by a discus sion. The course brought together experimentalists and theoreticans physicists, astro physicists and astronomers from a wide variety of backgrounds, including young scientists at the post-doctoral level, senior scientists and advanced graduate stu dents as well.