Università Roma Tre

This course discusses in detail the key issues in Modern Cosmology, including outstanding problems. The goal is to provide an overview of the subject and to illustrate the main techniques, theoretical and observational alike, commonly used in this field. The main topics are:
- The Dark matter problem. The Dark Energy problem.
- Cosmic inflation: a closer look. Inflationary models.
- Density fluctuation in a cosmological scenario: generation and growth. Gravitational Instability. Newtonian limit and the Jeans Theory. Linear theory.
- Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuation. Acoustic peaks. The Sachs-Wolfe effect. Secondary effects. -
- Cosmic backgrounds in different energy bands: Radio, X-ray and gamma-ray
- Secondary anisotropies. The Gunn-Peterson effect, cosmic reionization, Ly-alpha forest and Sunayev-Zel'dovich effect.
- The intergalactic medium at low redshift and the missing baryons problem.
- Large scale structures. Statistical analysis of the galaxy distribution in space. Correlation functions and power spectra.
- Luminous vs. dark matter. Galaxy bias.
- Nonlinear growth of density fluctuations. The Zel'dovich approximation. The spherical collapse model. The halo model. Press-Schechter theory and its extension.
- Peculiar velocities, distance indicators and their calibrations.
- Gravitational lensing: Theory and observations. Micro-lensing. Strong lensing. Weak lensing.

Peacock J. Physical Cosmology. Cambridge Univ.Press
Longair M. Galaxy Formation [A&A Library ]
Coles P., Lucchin F. Cosmology [Wiley 2000]
Various reviews provided during the course.