The origin and evolution of the primordial perturbation is the key to understanding structure formation in the earliest stages of the Universe. It carries clues to the types of physical phenomena ...active in that extreme high-density environment. Through its evolution, generating first the observed cosmic microwave background anisotropies and later the distribution of galaxies and dark matter in the Universe, it probes the properties and dynamics of the present Universe. This graduate-level textbook gives a thorough account of theoretical cosmology and perturbations in the early Universe, describing their observational consequences and showing how to relate such observations to primordial physical processes, particularly cosmological inflation. With ambitious observational programmes complementing ever-increasing sophistication in theoretical modelling, cosmological studies will remain at the cutting edge of astrophysical studies for the foreseeable future.
If the very early Universe is dominated by the nonminimally coupled Higgs field and Starobinsky’s curvature-squared term together, the potential diagram would mimic the landscape of a valley, serving ...as a cosmological attractor. The inflationary dynamics along this valley is studied, model parameters are constrained against observational data, and the effect of isocurvature perturbation is estimated.
Inflationary cosmology has been developed over the last twenty years to remedy serious shortcomings in the standard hot big bang model of the universe. This textbook, first published in 2005, ...explains the basis of modern cosmology and shows where the theoretical results come from. The book is divided into two parts; the first deals with the homogeneous and isotropic model of the Universe, the second part discusses how inhomogeneities can explain its structure. Established material such as the inflation and quantum cosmological perturbation are presented in great detail, however the reader is brought to the frontiers of current cosmological research by the discussion of more speculative ideas. An ideal textbook for both advanced students of physics and astrophysics, all of the necessary background material is included in every chapter and no prior knowledge of general relativity and quantum field theory is assumed.
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