Cosmology

Prerequisites & course information

Explore inflationary cosmology, the formation of element abundances during Big Bang nucleosynthesis, cosmological perturbations and structure formation, the cosmic microwave background, and the content of the universe (including dark matter and dark energy). Examine unresolved problems in cosmology (such as the origin of the matter/antimatter asymmetry), the possibility of extra dimensions, what happened before the Big Bang, "big data" in cosmology, observational probes of dark energy, and inflation models and tests. Three lecture hours a week for one semester.