An overview of Cosmology

This is a brief review of the standard model of cosmology. We first introduce the FRW models and their flat solutions for energy fluids playing an important role in the dynamics at different epochs. We then introduce different cosmological lengths and some of their applications. The later part is dedicated to the physical processes and concepts necessary to understand the early and very early Universe and observations of it.

An introduction to the physics and mathematics of the expanding universe, using no more than high-school level / undergraduate mathematics. Covered are the basics of scale factor expansion, the dynamics of the expanding universe, various distance concepts and the generalized redshift-luminosity relation, among other topics.

These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with its successes and shortcomings, which will lead to inflationary cosmology as the paradigm for the origin of the global structure of the universe as well as the origin of the spectrum of density perturbations responsible for structure in ou...

Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features of the universe are being tested, and deep connections between physics on the smallest scales and on the largest scales are being revealed.

In these lectures I review the present status of the so-called Standard Cosmological Model, based on the hot Big Bang Theory and the Inflationary Paradigm. I will make special emphasis on the recent developments in observational cosmology, mainly the acceleration of the universe, the precise measurements of the microwave background anisotropies, and the formation of structure like galaxies and clusters of galaxies from tiny primodial fluctuations generated during inflation.

We review current theoretical cosmology, including fundamental and mathematical cosmology and physical cosmology (as well as cosmology in the quantum realm), with an emphasis on open questions.

One hundred years ago we did not know how stars generate energy, the age of the Universe was thought to be only millions of years, and our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy known. Today, we know that we live in an evolving and expanding Universe comprising billions of galaxies, all held together by dark matter. With the hot big-bang model, we can trace the evolution of the Universe from the hot soup of quarks and leptons that existed a fraction of a second after the beginn...

These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and reviewing its basic properties. Subsequent lectures provide an overview of the early universe. The final lectures give an introduction to the inflationary universe, beginning with the motivating puzzles of the standard cosmology (the horizo...

Subject of this article is the relationship between modern cosmology and fundamental physics, in particular general relativity as a theory of gravity on one side, together with its unique application in cosmology, and the formation of structures and their statistics on the other. It summarises arguments for the formulation for a metric theory of gravity and the uniqueness of the construction of general relativity. It discusses symmetry arguments in the construction of Friedma...

These lecture notes are based on the hand-written notes which I prepared for the cosmology course taught to graduate students of PPGFis and PPGCosmo at the Federal University of Esp\'irito Santo (UFES), starting from 2014. This course covers topics ranging from the evidence of the expanding universe to Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies. They can be found also on my personal webpage http://ofp.cosmo-ufes.org/ and shall be published by Springer in 2018.