Cosmology for Physicists

Written by an award-winning cosmologist, this brand new textbook provides advanced undergraduate and graduate students with coverage of the very latest developments in the observational science of cosmology. The book is separated into three parts; part I covers particle physics and general relativity, part II explores an account of the known history of the universe, and part III studies inflation. Full treatment of the origin of structure, scalar fields, the cosmic microwave background and the early universe are provided.

Problems are included in the book with solutions provided in a separate solutions manual. More advanced extension material is offered in the Appendix, ensuring the book is fully accessible to students with a wide variety of background experience.

Features:

• Incorporates the latest experimental results, at a time of rapid change in the field
• Explores the origin of structure and the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Includes an extensive number of problems and a corresponding solutions manual

Autorentext

David Lyth is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at Lancaster University. He has made several key advances in cosmology, and received the Hoyle medal and prize from the Institute of Physics in 2012. He has written three academic physics books.

David Lyth has been responsible for many of the key advances in the theory of inflation, and has devised many of the analytical tools that are now widely used by the theoretical cosmology community. His work is always characterised by an incisive clarity. Although mathematically sophisticated, it always maintains contact with observation. The methods he developed have become the standard language for those who compare observational data obtained by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) with the predictions of inflationary theory. While much work on inflation has been purely phenomenological, Lyth has linked cosmology with fundamental physics, particularly extensions of the Standard Model.

In 2000, together with Andrew Liddle, he published a textbook on cosmological inflation and large-scale structure that has become the standard reference and an essential resource for everyone in the field. They followed this up in 2009 with the first graduatelevel textbook devoted specifically to the primordial density perturbation. Both books exemplify David's dedication to accurate scholarship and his ability to make complex concepts accessible.

Inhalt

The Universe. Particle Physics. General Relativity. The Present Universe. A First Look at the History. Energy Density of the Universe. The First Stage. Onward to the Present. Cosmological Redshift. The Primordial Curvature Perturbation. Ripples in the Universe. Galaxy Formation. Scalar Fields. Inflation. Generating the Perturbation. Prehistory of the Big Bang. Epilogue.