Large Scale Structure Formation

The modern Persian word for cosmology is "Keyhan-shenakht", which is also the title of a Persian book written more than 800 years ago. The same term can also be found in Old Persian. In spite of this old tradition, modern cosmology is a new~omer within the scientific disciplines in Iran. The cosmology community' is small and not yet well established. Given the spectacular recent advances in observational and theoretical cosmology, the large amount of new observational data which will become available in the near future, and the rapid expansion of the international cosmology community, it was realized that Iran should play a more active role in the exciting human endeavour which cosmology constitutes. This was the main motivation to establish a School on Cosmology in Iran. The plan is to hold a cosmology school every three years somewhere in Iran. The focus of this First School on Cosmology was chosen to be structure formation, a rapidly evolving cornerstone of modern cosmology. The topics of the school were selected in order to give both a broad overview of the current status of cosmological structure formation, and an in-depth dis cussion of the key issues theory of cosmological perturbations and analysis of cosmic microwave anisotropies. The lectures by Blanchard and Sarkar give an overview of homogeneous cosmological models and standard big bang cosmology. In his contribution, Padmanabhan presents a comprehen sive discussion of the growth of cosmological perturbations.

Klappentext

Theoretical cosmology has undergone a stage of very rapid development over the past decade. Given an initial theory for the origin of density fluctuations, it is now possible to make high-precision quantitative predictions of cosmic microwave background anisotropies and matter power spectra. It is hard for young scientists who want to work in the field of modern cosmology to find books which will provide them with a pedagogical and comprehensive overview of recent developments. The aim of the present volume is to fill this gap. The volume contains a selection of review articles written by international experts and will give the reader a comprehensive introduction to modern cosmology. It goes beyond existing books and conference proceedings in providing the reader with an in-depth survey of recent advances in modern cosmology. Some of the topics (e.g., the modern theory of CMB anisotropies and their application to defect models) are presented for the first time in a comprehensive way suited for physicists who want to start working in the field or gain a solid foundation in modern cosmology. The review article on alternative ideas in cosmology which might address some of the problems of the present models is also a unique feature of this book.

Inhalt
Homogeneous Cosmological Models.- The Standard Big Bang Cosmology.- Aspects of Gravitational Clustering.- Inflationary Cosmology: Progress and Problems.- An Introduction to CMB Anisotropies.- Cosmic Defects and Cosmology.- Imaginative Cosmology.- Microlensing: Latest News.