Ph236b Syllabus (a work in progress):

Week 1 (Jan 3):	      Cosmology introduction; FRW metric,
                      Friedmann equation; ages, distances,
                      horizons
suggested reading:    The "cosmology" chapter in Carroll's
                      book, Wald's book, or any other general
                      relativity or cosmology book.  Chs 1-2 of
                      Dodelson's book.


Week 2 (Jan 10):      Classical cosmological tests and
                      thermodynamics in an expanding Universe.
suggested reading:    Again, the cosmology chapter of Carroll's
                      and Wald's book, or any other GR or
                      cosmology book.  Chs 1-2 of Dodelson's
                      book.  I also like Ch 13 of Peebles'
                      "Principles of Physical Cosmology", and
                      Chs 2-3 of Kolb and Turner's "The Early
                      Universe" are also good.

Week 3 (Jan 17):      Thermal history of the Universe.
                      Big-bang nucleosynthesis, neutrino
                      decoupling, thermal relics,
                      recombination, 
suggested reading:    Ch. 8.7 in Carroll's book.  Ch. 3 in
                      Dodelson's book.  Ch. 5.4 in Wald'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.  Ch. 2 in
                      Liddle & Lyth's Cosmological
                      Inflation and Large-Scale
                      Structure. There may also be relevant
                      parts to Peacock's Cosmological
                      Physics.

Week 4 (Jan 24):      Relativistic cosmological perturbations.
                      Perturbations to the FRW metric,
                      perturbed stress-energy tensor,
                      syncrhonous gauge, Poisson gauge, and
                      conformal Newtonian gauge.
suggested reading:    Carroll, Ch 7.2; Ch. 5 in Dodelson;
                      Chapter 4 in Bertschinger's "Cosmological
                      Dynamics"
                      (http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9503125).

Week 5 (Jan 31):      Statistics of CMB
                      temperature/polarization fluctuations
Suggested reading:    "Theory of Cosmic Microwave Background
                      Polarization," P. Cabella and
                      M. Kamionkowski,
                      http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403392
		      parts 1-6

Week 6 (Feb 7)	      CMB fluctuations from gravitational waves
               	      (tensor metric perturbations); weak
               	      gravitational lensing (cosmic shear) of
               	      the CMB
Suggested reading:    "Theory of Cosmic Microwave Background
                      Polarization," P. Cabella and
                      M. Kamionkowski,
                      http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403392
		      parts 7-

Week 7 (Feb 14):      Inflation.  Problems with standard hot
                      big-bang; inflationary dynamics.
Suggested reading:    Carroll, 8.8; Kolb and Turner, Ch. 8;
                      Dodelson, Ch. 6; Liddle and Lyth,
                      Cosmological Inflation  and Large-Scale
                      Structure, Ch. 3; Peebles, Ch. 17.

Week 8 (Feb 21):      Production of density perturbations and
                      gravitational waves during inflation.
Suggested reading:    Dodelson 6.4--6.6; Liddle and Lyth, {\it
                      Cosmological Inflation and Large-Scale
                      Structure}, Ch. 7; Carroll, 8.8; Kolb and
                      Turner, Ch. 8; Peebles, Ch. 17.

Week 9 (Feb 28)	      Gravitational lensing and also CMB power
                      spectra. 
Suggested reading:    Dodelson, Chs. 8 and 10; Carroll, 7.3 and
                      8.6.  Cabella and Kamionkowski,
                      astro-ph/0403392, Sections 8 and 9.  Liddle and
                      Lyth, Cosmological Inflation and
                      Large-Scale Structure, Ch. 5.  For
                      gravitational lensing in the astrophysical
                      context, see Blandford and Narayan,
                      Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 30, 311
                      (1992).

Week 10 (Mar 7):      Lagrangian formulation of GR and
                      scalar-tensor theories (Mon) and quantum
                      fields in curved spacetime (Wed)
Suggested readin:     Carroll, Sections 1.10, 4.3, 4.8, and Chapter 9.