Cosmology

Dietrich Bödeker

Lecture notes, problem sheets

1. Organization, overview
   Introduction, units
   Fig: Hubble diagram (source)
   Fig: CMB spectrum (PDG 2002)
   Fig: CMB temperature fluctuations (NASA/WMAP Science Team)
   Fig: Primordial abundance of light nuclei (PDG)
   Sheet 1
2. 1 Expanding Universe 1.1 Newtonian cosmology 1.2 Metric tensor
3. 1.3 Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric
   Sheet 2
4. 1.4 Einstein equations
   Fig: DESI 2024 VI: Cosmological Constraints from the Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
   Sheet 3
5. 1.5 Solutions to the Friedmann equations
6. 1.6 Propagation of light and particles
   Sheet 4
7. 1.7 Measuring a(t)
   Hubble-diagram (source)
   Type Ia Supernova at z > 1 (source)
8. 2 The hot Universe 2.1 Conservation laws
   Sheet 5
9. 2.2 Equilibrium thermodynamics
   Fig: Effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom (source)
10. 2.3 Entropy
    Sheet 6
11. 2.4 Lepton era
12. 3 Neutrino decoupling and electron-positron annihilation
    Sheet 7
13. 4 Nucleosynthesis 4.1 Boltzmann equation
14. 4.2 Boltzmann equation for neutron freeze-out
    Sheet 8
15. 4.3 Time evolution of neutron concentration
16. 4.4 Deuterium bottleneck
    Fig: Time evolution of mass fractions (source)
    Fig: Time evolution of number fractions (source)
17. 4.5 Out-of-equilibrium dynamics

Astrophysical constants
Physical constants

Textbooks

• V. Mukhanov Physical Foundations of Cosmology
• V. Rubakov, D. Gorbunov, Introduction to the Theory of the Early Universe: Hot Big Bang Theory
• E.W. Kolb, M.S. Turner, The Early Universe