Ay 127 - Spring 2008  ** last update: 9 March 2010

Instructors:
	Marc Kamionkowski, kamion[at]tapir, x-2563, 322 Cahill
	Andrew Benson, abenson AT tapir x4667 320 Cahill

TA:
	Elisabeth Krause, ekrause AT astro.caltech.edu, x4963, 369 Cahill
	
Times:  Tuesdays 10:30-noon and Thursday 2:30-4:00pm

Tentative schedule of lectures (subject to further changes):

Week 1:               Cosmology introduction; FRW metric,
Benson   	      Friedmann equation; ages, distances,
week of Mar 29        horizons, cosmological parameters
suggested reading:    Chs. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 of Longair; Chs 1-2 of
                      Dodelson's book.  Ch. 2, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.6 of
                      Kolb-Turner.


Week 2:               Neo-classical cosmological tests---number
Benson        	      counts, distance-redshift relations,
week of Apr 5  	      Alcock-Paczynski test, quasar-lensing
        	      statistics
suggested reading:   Ch 13 of Peebles'
                      "Principles of Physical Cosmology", and
                      Chs 2-3 of Kolb and Turner's "The Early
                      Universe" are also good.  Chs 1-2 of
                      Dodelson's book.  Ch. 8 of Longair.

Week 3:		      Thermodynamics in an expanding Universe
Benson   	      and thermal history. neutrino decoupling,
week of Apr 12 	      thermal relics, recombination and the CMB
        	      spectrum, big-bang nucleosynthesis, baryogenesis,
        	      Gunn-Tremaine bound
suggested reading:    Ch. 3 in Dodelson's book.  Chs. 3-5 in
                      Kolb and Turner's The Early Universe.
                      Assorted sections in Peebles' Principles
                      of Physical Cosmology cover what we're
                      doing this week, but not in one place.
                      Chs 9-10 in Longair.  There may also be relevant
                      parts to Peacock's Cosmological
                      Physics.

Week 4:		      Growth of linear density perturbations;
Benson   	      Jeans instability,
week of Apr 19	      peculiar velocities; spherical top-hat
        	      collapse; correlation functions and the
        	      power spectrum; 
suggested reading:    Chs. 11-14 in Longair; assorted sections
                      in Peebles, although there's no
                      one-to-one correspondence between his
                      organization and ours.  Chs. 15-17 in
                      Peacock's "Cosmological Physics".  Ch. 9
                      in Kolb and Turner.

Week 5:		      More on structure formation: halo abundances
Benson   	      (Press-Schechter theory) and the
week of Apr 26 	      luminosity function; biasing, Gaussian versus
        	      non-Gaussian initial conditions;
        	      redshift-space distortions; the Limber
        	      approximation; nonlinear evolution of the
        	      power spectrum; Zeldovich approximation;
        	      galaxy formation
suggested reading:    Chs. 11-14 in Longair; assorted sections
                      in Peebles, although there's no
                      one-to-one correspondence between his
                      organization and ours.  Chs. 15-17 in
                      Peacock's "Cosmological Physics".  Ch. 9
                      in Kolb and Turner.

Week 6:		      inflation: basic dynamics and density
Kamionkowski	      perturbations; CMB fluctuations: power
week of May 3	      spectra, correlation functions,
       		      polarization, predictions and
       		      observations; baryon wiggles in the
       		      matter power spectrum

Week 7:		      gravitational lensing: strong lensing,
Kamionkowski  	      weak lensing and cosmic shear,
week of May 10 	      gravitational microlensing
suggested reading:    Peacock's "Cosmological Physics," Chapter
                      2.  Blandford-Narayan, ARAA 300, 311
                      (1992).  Chs. 7.3 and 8.6 in Carroll's
                      general relativity book.

Week 8:		      The Lyman-alpha forest, the intergalactic
Kamionkowski   	      medium, the ionizing flux, the
week of May 17 	      star-formation history, the first stars,
        	      reionization.
suggested reading:    Ch. 23 in Peebles' "Principles of
                      Physical Cosmology."  Chs. 18-19 in
                      Longair.  Rauch's review article on the
                      Lyman-alpha forest [ARAA 36, 267
                      (1998)].  Ch. 14 in Peacock's
                      "Cosmological Physics".

Week 9:		      Galaxy clusters; x-ray emission,
Kamionkowski  	      dynamics, central galaxies, cluster
week of May 24 	      cooling problems, Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect
suggested reading:    Chs. 13, 14, and 17 in Peacock's
                      "Cosmological Physics".  Chs. 24-25 in
                      Peebles, "Principles of Physical
                      Cosmology."  Chs. 4, 17, and 20 in
                      Longair's "Galaxy Formation".