Modern Cosmology

by Scott Dodelson

Modern Cosmology begins with an introduction to the smooth, homogeneous universe described by a Friedman-Robertson-Walker metric, including careful treatments of dark energy, big bang nucleosynthesis, recombination, and dark matter. From this starting point, the reader is introduced to perturbations about an FRW their evolution with the Einstein-Boltzmann equations, their generation by primordial inflation, and their observational consequences. These consequences include the anisotropy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) featuring acoustic peaks and polarization, the matter power spectrum with baryonic wiggles, and their detection via photometric galaxy surveys, redshift distortions, cluster abundances, and weak lensing. The book concludes with a long chapter on data analysis. Modern Cosmology is the first book to explain in detail the structure of the acoustic peaks in the CMB, the E/B decomposition in polarization which may allow for detection of primordial gravity waves, and the modern analysis techniques used on increasingly large cosmological data sets. Readers will gain the tools needed to work in cosmology and learn how modern observations are rapidly revolutionizing our picture of the universe.

Genres: Physics, Science, Textbooks, Astronomy, Technical, Reference

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Erickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book, as promised by the author, is quite comprehensive. It covers essentially all topics of cosmology at basic level, and at level accessible to most students well-versed in their undergraduate courses. For example, while general relativity is expected, he did go through a VERY USEFUL crash course on how to perform explicit computations using tensor analysis and Christoffel symbols for various observables.

The book has a lot of explicit calculations (which I have yet done, but browsed through) to guide. On first reading I don't quite get most of it (especially the bigger picture), but Dodelson did attempt to provide interpretations which are helpful.

At any rate, useful beginning for a taste of cosmology for undergraduates and beginning graduates. A minor issue is that it has a lot of errors and readers are asked to refer to the errata online.

[فرهاد ذکاوت · Rating 3 out of 5]

A taste of each context in CMB studies, not in details just a quick review of each. for phenomenologists in cosmology who study the early universe during CMB this book can be a little bit useful at least to find the main parts of studies, find the clues and key words then go for better references and most importantly papers. Unfortunately for phenomenology this is already out of date but topics can be useful as described above.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very detailed and heavy going cosmology text book geared to graduate students. It doesn't shy away from General Relativity including FRLW equations, ricci tensors, Cristoffel symbols and the rest. Or boltzmann equations and spherical Fourier Harmonics on the CMB and all sorts of perturbation approximations. Very heavy going. I skimmed this but if one mastered it I would expect someone like that to be at the expert level rather than an enthusiastic amateur like me.