Astronomy 5682: Introduction to Cosmology
Spring 2009

Items handed out in class

• Course Syllabus
• Problem Set 1, due Tuesday, 1/22.
• Problem Set 2, and associated figures due Thursday, 1/30.
• Problem Set 3, due Thursday, 2/7.
• Problem Set 4, due Thursday, 2/14.
• Review guide for midterm.
• Midterm and midterm solution set handed out on 2/26.
• Problem Set 5, due Thursday, 3/21.
• Problem Set 6, due Tuesday, 4/2. Note change of due date.
• Problem Set 7, due Thursday, 4/11.
• Problem Set 8. due Thursday, 4/18.
• Review guide for final and course evaluation.

Lecture notes

All notes are in pdf format.

• 1. Observational Basis of the Big Bang Cosmological Model
• Figures for part 1: Full size or reduced size.
• 2. General Relativity
• 3. The Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Metric
• 4. Cosmic Dynamics: The Friedmann Equation
• Slides on SDSS and BAO: ppt or pdf.
• 5. Cosmic Expansion History.
• 6. History of the Universe.
• 7. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.
• 8. Particle Dark Matter.
  Links on neutrino astrophysics that John Beacom mentioned in his guest lecture:
  Notes 1.
  Notes 2.
  Notes 3.
• 9. Measuring Cosmological Paramters Via Expansion.
  Slides for SN cosmology.
• 10. The Cosmic Microwave Background.
• 11. CMB Anisotropy.
  Slides for CMB anisotropy.
• 12. Inflation.
  
• 13. Dark Matter and Structure Formation.
  
• 14. Cosmological Frontiers.
  

Video links:
I will show some of these in class, but I probably won't get to all of them.

• Flight through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey map of the universe.
• Flight through structure in the nearby universe.
• Flight outward through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. As we go out to greater distances, we are effectively looking backward in time. The most distant galaxies here are about 12 billion light years away.
• Computer simulation of a merger of two disk galaxies. The computer is just calculating the effects of gravity on the initial rotating disks of stars. (I think there is also dark matter in the simulation, but it isn't shown in the video.)
• Computer simulation of the gravitational clustering of dark matter. The expansion of the universe has been scaled out, so that we are always looking at the same matter. Rotation helps to see the 3-dimensional structure.
• Another computer simulation of dark matter clustering. This time the expansion of the universe hasn't been scaled out, but the video zooms in to show the formation of a single dark matter halo.
• Computer simulation of gravitational clustering of dark matter. This video shows a 2-dimensional projection of a 3-dimensional simulation, much larger in volume than the previous two. The expansion of the universe has again been scaled out.
• Another computer simulation with a 3-dimensional view. This one uses an approximate technique that I developed in my PhD thesis! (But I didn't do this simulation.)
• Computer simulation of the formation of a disk galaxy. In addition to gravity, there are pressure forces on the gas, and it is the combination of gravity, rotation, these pressure forces, and dissipation of energy that leads to the formation of a thin disk.
• Flight through the large scale distribution of dark matter in a computer simulation.
• Another simulation of a galaxy merger, but this one stops at several points to compare to images of observed merging galaxies.