Advanced Physical Cosmology (APC | INU7056U)
Description: The aim of the course is to provide an
advanced level exposition of modern theoretical and observational
cosmology, building upon the foundations provided by the third year
course PHAS3136. The emphasis will be on developing physical
understanding rather than on mathematical principles.
Over the past two decades, cosmology has made dramatic advances. A flood
of data has transformed our understanding of the basic parameters of
the universe -- the expansion rate, the densities of various types of
energy and the nature of the primordial density variations. The basic
Big Bang picture, underpinned by General Relativity, continues to hold
good, explaining the expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave
background radiation, the synthesis of light chemical elements and the
formation of stars, galaxies and large-scale structures. However, there
are important gaps in our understanding including the nature of the dark
matter, the cause of the observed late-time acceleration of the
universe and the classic puzzles of the initial singularity and what
caused the Big Bang.
This course will develop the standard Big Bang cosmology and review its
major successes and some of the challenges now faced at the cutting-edge
of the field.
After the completion of this course, students will have an appreciation
of the basic theoretical foundations of physical cosmology, as well as
an advanced understanding of the physics of several observational
results critical to our current picture of the Universe.
Year: 4 | Semester: B | Level: 7 | Credits: 15
