Read more
An up-to-date presentation of the progress and current problems in the early universe, cosmic microwave background radiation, large scale structure formation, and the interplay between them. The emphasis is on the mutual impact of fundamental physics and cosmology, both at theoretical and experimental (observational) levels within a deep, well- focused and well-defined programme.
The nature of the domain itself leads to different aspects, approaches and points of view on the same topic. Special care has been taken to provide the reader the basis of the different, sometimes competing lines of research.
All contributions are uniformly excellent, with a careful selection of the subjects and approaches covered, presenting a unifying and rigorous view of the field.
Audience: experimentalists and theoreticians from a variety of backgrounds: physics, astrophysics and astronomy. An excellent reference for post-doctoral scientists. Useful for senior scientists and advanced graduate students.
List of contents
I. The Early universe.- The Covariant and Gauge Invariant Approach to Perturbations in Cosmology.- Lectures on Inflationary Cosmology.- Back Reaction of Strings in Self Consistent String Cosmology.- Topological Defects in Cosmology.- Cosmological Inflation, Microwave Background Anisotropies and Large Scale Structure of the Universe.- Cosmological Perturbations of Quantum - Mechanical Origin and Anisotropy of the Microwave Background Radiation.- II. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.- The Big Bang and the Infrared Sky as seen by COBE.- Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background: Results and Prospects.- Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Spectrum from Primordial Density Perturbations.- Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy.- Large Angular Scales/COBE DMR Results.- COBE DMR: Testing the Initial Conditions.- Detection of Primary and Secondary Anisotropies in the CMB.- Small-scale Fluctuations in the Microwave Sky: CBR Fluctuations on Sub-arcminute Scales and Sources of Foreground Noise.- III. Large Scale Structure.- Dark Matter and the Value of ?.- Dark Matter and Sakharov Oscillations.- Two Lecturn on the Observational Determinationof the Hubble Expansion Rate.- Photographs of the Institute.- Author Index.
