Astronomy 5682: Introduction to Cosmology
Spring 2019

Items handed out in class

• Course Syllabus
• Problem Set 1, due Thursday 1/17.
• Some brief notes on metrics (1/17)
• Solution to Problem Set 1.
• Problem Set 2, due Thursday 1/31.
• Solution to Problem Set 2.
• Problem Set 3, due Thursday 2/14.
• Solution to Problem Set 3.
• Problem Set 4, due Thursday 2/21.
• Review guide for midterm. Midterm is on Thursday, 2/28, full class period.
• Solution to Problem Set 4.
• Solutions for the midterm.
• Problem Set 5, due Thursday 3/28.
• Problem Set 6, due Thursday 4/4.
• Problem Set 7, due Tuesday, 4/16.
• Optional problem set recovery assignment, due Wednesday, 4/24.
• Review guide for final and student narrative evaluation. Final is on Thursday, April 25, 2:00-3:45, in usual classroom. Please complete evaluation while reviewing and bring it with you to the final.

Lecture notes

All notes are in pdf format.

• 1. Observational Basis of the Big Bang Cosmological Model
• Slides shown for Part 1.
  • Cosmology questions from the class.
• 2. General Relativity. Last section updated on 1/24.
• 3. The Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Metric
  • Some slides on Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) , pptx.
• 4. Cosmic Dynamics: The Friedmann Equation
• 5. Cosmic Expansion History
• 6. Observational Basis of the "ΛCDM" Model
• 7. History of the Universe
• 8. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• 9. The Cosmic Microwave Background
  • Slides on BBN and the CMB
• 10. Measuring Cosmological Parameters via Expansion
  • Slides on supernova cosmology
• 11. CMB Anisotropy
  • Slides on CMB anisotropy
  • Impact of parameters on CMB fluctuations, Wayne Hu animations
  • Impact of parameters on CMB fluctuations, Max Tegmark animations
• 12. Dark Matter and Structure Formation
  • Comparison of hot, warm, and cold dark matter. (Hot, warm, cold from left to right; high redshift at top, today at bottom).
  • Some people associated with dark matter.
• 13. Inflation
• 14. Cosmological Frontiers

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

• The Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar. The first empirical evidence for gravitational waves.
• Discovery of gravitational waves by LIGO. You can find a lot more videos and images on the LIGO web sites.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• Flight through the large scale distribution of dark matter in a computer simulation.
• 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 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.
• An even better computer simulation of the formation of a disk galaxy. The small panels show a larger scale view (at lower left) and zoomed in views of the gas and stars (at lower right).
• Simulation of a galaxy merger, which stops at several points to compare to images of observed merging galaxies.