mP403: cosmology

Text (reference)

Syllabus

Part 1 - General Relativity

• Difficulties with Newtonian mechanisms.
• Mach’s principle, principle of equivalence, spacetime and geometry, event separation, geodesics, curved spaces, curvature and gravitation.
• Physics near a massive body: radar echos, spectral shifts, particle motion, perihelion advance, bending of light, black holes.
• Hawking radiation.

Part 2 - Cosmology

• The smoothed-out universe, Robertson-Walker metric, event horizons.
• Apparent luminosity, density of galaxies.
• The cosmological constant.
• Friedmann models, steady-state models, Newtonian cosmology.
• Cosmic black-body radiation.
• Galaxy condensation.
• Recent observational tests of the cosmological parameters.

Lecturer

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