Assignments:

Problem Set 8 (due 5pm Friday May 1)
Reading: Ch 9, 11, and 12 of Ryden

Problem Set 7 (due 5pm Friday April 17)

Problem Set 6 (due 5pm Thursday April 2)
Reading: Dark Matter. Optional: Neutrino Mass and Mixing

Problem Set 5 (due 5pm Thursday Mar 12)
Reading: BBN

Problem Set 4 (due 5pm Thursday Mar 5)
Reading: Ch 2.4-2.5 and Ch 10 of Ryden

Problem Set 3 (due 5pm Thursday Feb 26)

Problem Set 2 (due 5pm Wednesday Feb 18)
Fig 4 and data from Tables 1 and 5 of Riess et al. (2004)
Reading: Ch 3, 6 and 7 of Ryden

Problem Set 1 (due 5pm Thursday Feb 5)
Reading: Ch 4 and 5 of Ryden

Reading (by Wed Jan 28): Ch 1 and 2.1-2.3 of Ryden

Announcements:

The purpose of the in-class presentation is to give you a chance to investigate in some depth a current research topic in cosmology, using the knowledge you have gained in class. This exercise is important because, unlike the standard physics courses (e.g. EM, quantum, stat mech), cosmology is a rapidly progressing subject that is filled with new (and sometimes wrong) research results and opportunities. Hopefully you will get a taste of the excitement in the field. You will also get to practice giving oral presentations, an integral part of most scientists' research activities.

Presentations: Each talk is 15 minutes. The audience is your classmates, so pedagogy is important. All of the topics below are broad and have consumed many professional astro/physicists' lives. Use your 15 minutes as if you were a professor recruiting your classmates to work on your topic. Focus on questions such as: Why is it important (or is it)? How is it done? What have we learned? What to expect next? I am happy to link to your presentation slides so interested students can look at it in more details later. For several topics, I have discussed the theoretical background at length in class. Here you should spend only one slide reviewing it and then jump into the observations and phenomenology. For other topics, you should aim for a balance in theory and results. Within this framework, you have the freedom to design your talk. The linked references are only meant to get you started. You should explore beyond it, read a lot, learn a lot, and extract the essential points to present to the class. We will meet with each team the week before the presentation date to go over your talk outline.

April 6 (Mon): Christina Kay + Edward Young: 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

April 8 (Wed): Anna Rosen + Jessia Benzler: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: how to measure the abundances of helium, deuterium, and lithium?

Article from Review of Particle Physics (2008)

Review by Steigman (2003) astro-ph/0307244

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

April 8 (Wed): Clay Miller + Alex McLeod : Baryonic dark matter: how to find them? Micro-gravitational lensing

MACHO team website

OGLE team website

April 13 (Mon): Ken Reichl + Eric Petigura: Mapping dark matter using gravitational lensing

Lecture notes by Narayan and Bartelmann

Current list of multiply-lensed systems: CASTLES

CLASS lensing survey

April 15 (Wed): Jason Chu + Tim Ma: 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)

April 20 (Mon): Tae Lim + Josh Mendoza: Cold dark matter: how to find them?

Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) website

Latest WIMP limits from EDELWEISS team arXiv:0901.2040

WIMP detection claim from the DAMA Experiment

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

April 20 (Mon): Charles Lieou + Shane Frewen: 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

April 22 (Wed): Beatrice Bonga + Nathalie Skrzypek: 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

April 22 (Wed): Nhieu Duong + Vicki Toy: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"

April 27 (Mon): Etsuko Mieda + Robyn Mostardi: 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

April 27 (Mon): Kimberly Aller + Katherine Deck: 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"

April 29 (Wed): Allic Sivaramakrishnan + Paul Brook : TBD

April 29 (Wed): William Kang + Kiarash Kiantaj : Cosmological Simulations

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

MPA Numerical Cosmology

May 4 (Mon): Ali Zaki : Multiverses

Instructor: Prof. Chung-Pei Ma
Office: Campbell Hall 641B
Phone: (510) 642-4850
Email: cpma(at)berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Mon 2-3pm Campbell 641B

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

Grader: James McBride
Email: jmcbride(at)berkeley.edu

Lectures: MW 10:30-noon; Campbell 544

Sections: Tuesday 11-12 or 4-5; Campbell 544

Main Text:

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

Andrew Liddle "An Introduction to Modern Cosmology" (at a comparable level to Ryden)
M. S. Longair "Galaxy Formation" (for those interested in graduate-level cosmology)
Steven Weinberg "The First Three Minutes" (a popular account of the thermal history of the universe)
Kip Thorne "Black Holes and Time Warps" (a beautifully written popular book on black holes and relativity)

Grading:

50% Problem Sets; 25% Exam; 25% Project

(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