Lecture Notes in Cosmology

Book excerpt: Cosmology has become a very active research field in the last decades thanks to the impressing improvement of our observational techniques which have led to landmark discoveries such as the accelerated expansion of the universe, and have put physicists in front of new mysteries to unveil, such as the quest after the nature of dark matter and dark energy. These notes offer an approach to cosmology, covering fundamental topics in the field: the expansion of the universe, the thermal history, the evolution of small cosmological perturbations and the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Some extra topics are presented in the penultimate chapter and some standard results of physics and mathematics are available in the last chapter in order to provide a self-contained treatment. These notes offer an in-depth account of the above-mentioned topics and are aimed to graduate students who want to build an expertise in cosmology.