AS7009 Cosmology, 7.5 hp, Fall 2010
Literature:	Barbara Ryden, 2002, "Introduction To Cosmology",  Pearson Higher Education ISBN 0805389121 or 9780805389128
Contents:	The world models of general relativity, cosmic expansion, thermodynamics and nucleosynthesis in the early Universe, dark matter and dark energy, methods for measuring cosmological parameters, structure formation, the cosmic microwave background radiation, inflation.
Prerequisites:	Knowledge corresponding to the first two years of a Bachelor's degree in physics, or similar.
Examination:	Seminars, literature report and hand-in exercises.
Teacher:	Erik Zackrisson, ez(at)astro.su.se, phone: 08-5537 8556
Time:	November-December 2010
If you are interested in participating, please notify Erik Zackrisson as soon as possible!

Schedule (preliminary)

Date	Time	Room	Lecture/ Exercise session/ Seminar	Topics	To read	To turn in/prepare
Nov 2	10-12	FC61	Lecture 1	Course information Course overview Cosmic epochs	Chapter 1
Nov 4	10-12	FC61	Lecture 2	Cosmological principle Cosmic expansion General relativity Metrics	Chapter 2 + first half of chapter 3
Nov 9	10-12	FC61	Lecture 3	Robertson-Walker metric Proper distance Cosmic dynamics	Second half of chapter 3 + chapter 4
Nov 15	10-12	FC61	Lecture 4	Dynamics with single and multiple components Concordance cosmology Fate of the Universe	Chapters 5 + 6
Nov 16	10-12	FC61	Lecture 5	Measuring cosmological parameters Dark energy	Chapter 7
Nov 18	10-12	FC61	Exercise session I	Exercises 1-6
Nov 23	10-12	FC61	Lecture 6	Dark matter	Chapter 8
Nov 25	10-12	FC61	Lecture 7	Cosmic microwave background radiation	Chapter 9
Nov 25	13-15	FC61	Exercise session II	Exercises 7-12		Hand-in exercises 1-3
Nov 30	10-12	FC61	Seminar I	Common misconceptions about modern cosmology		See instructions for seminar I
Dec 2	10-12	FC61	Lecture 8	Big bang nucleosynthesis The early Universe	Chapter 10	Hand-in exercises 4-6
Dec 7	10-12	FC61	Lecture 9	Inflation	Chapter 11
Dec 7	13-15	FC61	Lecture 10	Structure formation	Chapter 12
Dec 8	10-12	FC61	Exercise session III	Exercises 13-18	Session cancelled - solutions posted below!
Dec 14						Hand-in exercises 7-9 Written literature report
Dec 16	10-12	FC61	Seminar II	Strange Universe		See instructions for seminar II
Dec 20	13-15	FC61	Oral reports			Oral literature report

Examination

· Two seminars

· Three sets of hand in-exercises

· Written essay (minimum 3 pages) + oral presentation (10 minutes)

Course material

· Seminar instructions: I, II

· Dataset for seminar II

· Exercises (including hand-ins)

· Lecture notes: L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7, L8, L9, L10

· Solutions from exercise session 3

Errata

· Lecture notes, L3: The table in the slide entitled “W and Geometry” appears empty due to some bug in the software converting Powerpoint to pdf. The entries in the “Energy density” column should read (from top to bottom): W₀>1, W₀<1 and W₀=1. The entries in the “Curvature (geometry)” column should read (top to bottom): k=+1 (closed), k=-1 (open) and k=0 (flat).

· Lecture notes, L4: Slides 29 and 31 appear completely black in the hand-out versions, due to file conversion problems. Both of these are supposed to feature figure 6.3 (page 92) from the textbook. Slide 31 just indicates where the benchmark model is in this diagram.

· In hand-in exercise 5, you should assume that the absolute magnitude of type Ia supernovae is M_B = -19.6

Literature exercise topics already selected

· Time travel

· Parallel Universes

· The topology of the Universe

· Antimatter

· Brane cosmology

· Quasi-steady state cosmology

· Primordial black holes

· Reionization

· CMBR anisotropies

· Dark matter in galaxies