Cosmological Inflation and Large-Scale Structure

A thorough and up-to-date graduate textbook on the most promising theory of the universe - inflationary cosmology.

Andrew R. Liddle (Author), David H. Lyth (Author)

9780521575980, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 April 2000

416 pages, 66 b/w illus. 10 tables
24.9 x 17.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.7 kg

' … since I received the book to review it never has left my desk. Eventually I forgot I had promised to review it, but I actually used it nearly every day. Whether you're cramming for your exams, solving your first PhD problem in inflationary cosmology, or trying to find a way to outdo inflation this is an excellent book which I could not recommend more.' Joao Magueijo, General Relativity and Gravitation

This textbook provides graduate students with a thorough and up-to-date introduction to inflationary cosmology. Enormous progress has been made in this area in the last few years and this book is the first to provide a modern and unified overview. It covers all aspects of inflationary cosmology and carefully compares predictions with the latest observations, including those of the cosmic microwave background, the clustering and velocities of galaxies and the epoch of structure formation. Problems are included throughout to help the student to develop a thorough understanding. With the host of international experiments currently being performed and planned for the near future (including NASA's MAP satellite, and the European Space Agency's Planck mission), inflationary cosmology promises to be one of the most exciting and fruitful topics of research in science in the next decade. This book provides graduate students with the ideal introduction.

1. Introduction
2. The hot Big Bang cosmology
3. Inflation
4. The simplest model for the origin of structure I
5. The simplest model for the origin of structure II
6. Extensions to the smplest model
7. Scalar fields and the vacuum fluctuation
8. Building and testing models of inflation
9. The cosmic microwave background
10. Galaxy motions and clustering
11. The Quasi-Linear regime
12. Putting observations together
13. Outlook for the future
14. Advanced topic: cosmological Perturbation theory
15. Advanced topic: diffusion and free streaming
Index.

Subject Areas: Physics [PH], Cosmology & the universe [PGK]