Announcements:

Week of April 22:

Problem Set 9 posted below. This is the last set. Note the unusual due date.

In-class presentation order: Every talk is 10 minutes, strictly enforced. Make sure to practice and time it beforehand.

Office hours to get feedback on your draft talk slides:

CP Ma (in Campbell Hall 641B):

3-4:30pm Friday April 27

3-4:30pm Monday April 30

3-4:30pm Thursday May 3

Onsi (in Campbell Hall 715)

4-5pm Tuesday May 1

5-6pm Wednesday May 2 (no regular sections next week)

Monday April 30 class:

1. Lauren Anderson + Dylan Nelson: Supermassive black holes at centers of galaxies

Summary of observational evidence for a supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center by Ghez

Summary of SMBH-galaxy formation by Haehnelt

2. Kolen Cheung + Jeff Yen:Gravity waves: what sources produce them? Binary black holes

Begelman et al (1980): Supermassive black hole Binaries

Summary of observational evidence for supermassive black hole binaries by Komossa

Gravity wave predictions by Wyithe and Loeb: "Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Black Hole Binaries: Predictions for LISA and Pulsar Timing Arrays"

3. Silvia Entradi + Damian Pitalua: Gravity Probe B

Gravity Probe B homepage

NASA site

4. Paul Higgins + Joey Cheung: Worm holes

5. Roger Griffith + Rastika Prasad: Formation of structure and the evolution of galaxy morphologies

6. Matt Rocklin + Tristan Lewis: Cosmological simulations: N-body

Review by Bertschinger (1998): Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 36, 599

MPA Numerical Cosmology

Wednesday May 2 class:

1. Adam Harris + Brian Kearney: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: how to measure the abundances of helium 4 and lithium 7?

Article from Review of Particle Physics (2006)

Review by Steigman (2003) astro-ph/0307244

Older review by Schramm and Turner (1998) Reviews of Modern Physics, 70, 303

2. Andrew Hilton + Suneet Upadhyay: Baryonic dark matter: how to find them? Micro-gravitational lensing

MACHO team website

OGLE team website

3. Griffin Foster + Mark Wagner: Mapping dark matter using gravitational lensing

Lecture notes by Narayan and Bartelmann

Current list of multiply-lensed systems: CASTLES

CLASS lensing survey

4. Tyler Pritchard + David Kellogg: Cold dark matter: how to find them?

Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) website

Latest WIMP limits from EDELWEISS team astro-ph/0605496, astro-ph/0412061

WIMP "detection" from DAMA team astro-ph/0405282, astro-ph/0307403

Gamma-ray telescopes H.E.S.S.: dark matter annihilation signatures

5. Nick Lee + Addison Huegel: Hot dark matter: massive neutrinos; neutrinos from supernovae

2002 Nobel Prize to Davis and Koshiba

John Bahcall's neutrino website

Underground experiments: SuperKamiokande, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)

SNEWS: The SuperNova Early Warning System

Monday May 7 class:

1. Phillip Kahn + Shir Skolnik: t_0: How is the age of the Universe measured? Dating white dwarfs, globular clusters etc.

Ned Wright's tutorial page

2. Tiffany Ussery + Ferah Munshi: H_0: How is the Hubble parameter measured? Parallax, Cepheids etc

Final HST Key Project paper on H_0: Freedman et al. (2001)

Hipparcos Satellite

3. Eric Lopez + James Anderson: q_0: How is the acceleration of the Universe measured?

Original two papers: Riess et al. (1998) , Perlmutter et al. (1999)

Recent high-redshift supernova results: Riess et al. (2004)

4. Aga Czeszumska + Chao Feng: CMB: secondary anisotropy: galaxy clusters; the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect

Review article (2002) by Carlstrom et al.

Review article (1999) by Birkinshaw

5. Koki Takasaki + Lucas Parker: CMB: polarization

Resuls from the DASI and CBI experiments

Observation summary article by Carlstrom: "Status of CMB Polarization Measurements from DASI and Other Experiments"

Lecture notes by Kosowsky

6. Duncan Wold + James McBride: Reionization: how do the first stars and galaxies reionize the neutral hydrogen and how to detect it?

Short review by Madau: "The Era of Reionization"

Week of April 9:

Problem Set 8 posted below. Start early! You are asked to write a 1-page outline of your presentation.

Week of April 2:

Problem Set 7 posted below.

Week of Mar 19:

Dear 161ers:

Below is a list of suggested presentation topics. Your tasks are:

(1) Find a teammate in class. If you can't find one, let us know and we will pair you up.
(2) Choose three topics from the list below. If all of them look good, say so -- that will make our life easier. If there is an order of preference among the three, say so too.
(3) Email both Onsi (onsi@berkeley.edu) and me (cpma@berkeley.edu) (1) and (2) above by 5pm Thursday this week.

Week of Mar 5:

Dear 161ers:
Unfortunately I am knocked out by the flu. Prof-to-be Mike Boylan-Kolchin will tell you all you need to know about Fermi and Bose statistics to understand the early universe. Barring more disasters, I will return on March 12. Don't worry - we still have half a Hubble time left to get through the first 3 minutes of the Big Bang. CP Ma

Week of Feb 26:

Dear 161ers:
I won't be able to make it to lectures this week due to a surgery last week. Prof. Eliot Quataert has graciously agreed to step in and lecture on black holes this week. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday March 5. I promise to get through the first 3 minutes of creation within a Hubble time. CP Ma

Week of Feb 19:

No lecture on Mon Feb 19 -- Presidents' Day.
No sections on Feb 20/21.
Go to lecture on Wed Feb 21.

Assignments:

Reading (by Monday Jan 29): Ch 1, Ch 2.1-2.3, Ch 4.1-4.3 of Ryden

Problem Set 1 (due 5pm Thursday Feb 8)
Reading: Ch 5 and 6 of Ryden

Problem Set 2 (due 5pm Tuesday Feb 20)
Fig 4 and data from Tables 1 and 5 of Riess et al. (2004)
Reading: Ch 3 and 7 of Ryden
Note the new due date! This is to give you time to learn how to generate plots and do a very simple numerical integration on the computer.
This is the 21st century -- no hand-drawn plots, please!

Problem Set 3 (due 5pm Thursday March 1)

Problem Set 4 (due 5pm Thursday March 8)
Reading: Ch 25 "Relativistic Stars and Black Holes" of Blandford and Thorne's evolving textbook.
Optional: For those interested in learning more about GR, read Ch 24 "Fundamental Concepts of General Relativity"

Problem Set 5 (due 5pm Thursday March 15)
Reading: Ch 10 of Ryden

Problem Set 6 (due 5pm Thursday March 22)

Problem Set 7 (due 5pm Thursday April 12)
Reading: Ch 8 of Ryden and "Dark Matter" from the Particle Reviews.
Optional: "Neutrino Mass, Mixing, and Flavor Change"

Problem Set 8 (due 5pm Thursday April 19)

Problem Set 9 (due 5pm Monday April 30, or noon Wednesday May 2 for students presenting on April 30)

Instructor: Prof. Chung-Pei Ma
Office: Campbell Hall 641B
Phone: (510) 642-4850
Fax: (510) 642-3411
Email: cpma(at)berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 4-5pm April 11 Campbell 641B

GSI: Onsi Fakhouri
Office: Campbell Hall 715
Email: onsi(at)berkeley.edu

Lectures: MW 10:30-noon; Campbell 544

Sections: Tue 4-5pm (in Campbell 544) or Wed 5-6pm (in Dwinelle 106). You only have to go to one of them.

Main Text:

Barbara Ryden "Introduction to Cosmology" (Addison Wesley; QB981.R93)

(Evolving and Expanding) Course Content:

1. The Smooth Universe

1.1 Homogeneity, isotropy, Hubble expansion [Ch 1,2]

1.2 Friedmann equation, equation of state, the density parameter [Ch 4]

1.3 Open, flat, closed models; radiation, matter, dark energy [Ch 5,6]

1.4 Rudiments of general relativity; the Robertson-Walker metric [Ch 3]

1.5 Age, time-redshift, distance-redshift, angular sizes [Ch 7]

2. Stuff in the Universe: the Bright Side

Tour of the particle zoo

Thermodynamics of Fermi and Bose gases in an expanding universe

The longest 3 minutes of your life: creation of light elements: helium, deuterium, lithium, baryon-to-photon ratio [Ch 10]

3. Stuff in the Universe: the Dark Side

Evidence for dark matter and dark energy

What can they be? [Ch 8]

4. The Lumpy Universe

Gravitational instability in a static vs expanding universe [Ch 12]

Growth of structures

Photon-baryon scattering; the cosmic microwave background [Ch 9]

5. The Baby Universe

Successes and problems of the standard Big Bang model [Ch 11]

How to fix it? Inflation

6. Black Holes

Why do we think they exist?

Black hole physics: Schwarzschild metric, event horizon, origin and growth of holes

Gravity waves