Syllabus
Cosmological epochs -- radiation-dominated era and matter-dominated era; recombination.
Physics of the early Universe -- cosmic microwave background radiation; thermal history of the early Universe; entropy; neutrinos.
Nucleosynthesis -- importance of the neutron-to-proton ratio; synthesis of helium and other elements; importance of deuterium; first three minutes.
Very early Universe -- Planck epoch; Big Bang; origin of the matter-anti-matter antisymmetry; anihilation and creation; inflationary Universe; observational tests of the theory of inflation.
Theory of galaxy formation -- Jeans theory; adiabatic and entropic perturbations; Bonnor theory; role and nature of the dark matter; mass of neutrinos; comparison with the observational data.
Cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy -- observations; dipole anisotropy; relation of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the special theory of relativity; Sachs-Wolfe effect; Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect.
Annotation
Second semester of a course of cosmology. Cosmological epochs; physics of the early Universe; nucleosynthesis; very early Universe; theory of galaxy formation; cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy.
Intended primarily for master and PhD students of astronomy and astrophysics, theoretical physics and particle and nuclear physics. Knowledge of the general theory of relativity at the level of NTMF111 (General theory of relativity) course is assumed.
Emphasis is put on the cosmological aspects of the astronomical observations.