PHY 663; Spring 2006
Please plan for a 25 minute presentation, plus 5-10 minutes for questions. I assume you will use either transparencies or a computer-based talk (powerpoint or PDF) unless I hear otherwise from you. Overhead projector is in the room, and I will provide a computer projector. If you are doing a computer-based talk, please **test** your computer connection before the presentation. (I can provide access to the computer projector well beforehand, for example.)
I encourage all of you to practice your presentation (at least to your cat, dog, or mirror) so that you have a sense of timing and how much you can (and can't) get through in the time allotted. Remember, you are also doing a writeup, so I will see the whole package. It's up to you to determine what is most relevant to present so that your fellow students and I understand the topic!
| 23 May: |
Brian Murray:
Weak Lensing
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| 25 May: |
Adam Clausen:
Dark Energy and Quintessence
Elsa Johnson: Galaxy clustering |
| 30 May: (10am-11:30am) |
Emelie Harstad:
Type Ia SN and Acceleration of Universe
Andreas Reinsch: WIMPs Wei Gong: Large/small scale structure and neutrinos (free streaming, Lyman-alpha forest) |
| 31 May: (5:30pm-7pm) |
David Reeb:
CMB: polarization, tensor perturbations, and primordial gravity waves
Stefan Schell: Supernovae as the origin of elements Henning Soller: Accretion Disks |
| 1 June: (10am-11:30am) |
Ricky Fok:
Gravitinos in the early Universe
Cullen Andrews: MOND as an alternative to dark matter Jinrui Huang: Baryogenesis |
| Instructor: | Prof. Graham Kribs |
| E-mail: | kribs@uoregon.edu |
| Office: | 470 Willamette Hall |
| Office Hours: | (anytime my door is open) |
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This is a one-quarter course on modern cosmology and the
early Universe. The course is designed for graduate students
with interests in cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics.
Some familarity with general relativity and particle physics
is useful, such as from a good undergraduate education,
but I'll fill in the gaps where necessary. The early Universe is
where the big (cosmology) and the small (particle physics)
become tightly integrated, as you'll see and learn in the course. The basic outline is to explain the hot big bang theory of the Universe, and all its fascinating consequences. This includes a discussion of Hubble expansion, FRW cosmology, thermodynamics in an expanding Universe, freeze out of heavy relics, big-bang nucleosynthesis, recombination, CMB, structure formation, and inflation. I won't be able to cover all of these topics in depth, but by the end you should be able to appreciate much of the physics behind the announcements that have (and will) come out in the New York Times science section. (Another one just came out!) Since I expect a diverse background of student experience, I will likely suggest problems and derivations to work out as homework that will be *optional*. If you do it, you will understand the material much better than if you don't. But you will still get the flavor of what's going on in one of the hottest fields of physics! Ultimately, how much you get out of the course is up to you. The requirement for the course, beyond attending all of the lectures, is to give a presentation in class and write a paper on one of a set of specialized topics that I will suggest in class. The idea is to go in-depth into some topic, write it up as a review paper and give a 20-30 minute presentation to everyone in class. This is good experience for how research is actually done. The topic that you pick will be restricted to be *not* related to your thesis topic or research that you have already done. More details are here. |
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The required textbook for this course is
The Early Universe by Kolb and Turner.
Kolb and Turner is on every practitioner's bookshelf, so
you won't regret buying it. As a textbook it has some
problems, including being somewhat dated
(written about 15 years ago), but it nevertheless provides
a good introduction to most of the topics that we'll cover. Other recommended books, articles, and resources include: Modern Cosmology by Dodelson. This appears to be a great book on cosmology and is very modern. I will be using bits and pieces from this book. A good intro to General Relativity is Sean Carroll's book Spacetime and Geometry: An intro to GR. There are also a condensed set of (free!) lecture notes available from the archive gr-qc/9712019. And, I just discovered a nice super-condensed set of notes by Sean available here. Other classic books on GR include Weinberg's "Gravitation and Cosmology" (too expensive even for me to list here) and Wald's book on "General Relativity". Other resources include Wayne Hu's web pages which include, among other things, a nice discussion of CMB (with animated Cl's!): http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/ There are several good technical summaries of various pieces of cosmology and astrophysics available from the Particle Data Group. This is also the desk reference to all things particle-ish. (And in fact the existence of all of the cosmo articles is testament to the synergy between particle physics and cosmology.) Structure formation is done in detail in Padmanabhan's book Structure formation in the universe. Quite recently he's written a review article that is on the archive: astro-ph/0602117. |
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Cullen Andrews MOND as an alternative to dark matter Adam Clausen Dark energy: quintessense, rolling scalar fields, etc. Ricky Fok Supersymmetric dark matter and gravitino problem Wei Gong Large/small scale structure and neutrinos (free streaming, Lyman-alpha forest) Emelie Harstad Type Ia Supernovae and the Acceleration of the Universe Jinrui Huang Baryogenesis: the origin of the matter Elsa Johnson Galaxy clustering (2dF survey; SDSS survey; how the surveys are carried out; how they determine cosmological parameters, particularly total matter density) Brian Murray Weak Lensing and the determination of Cosmological Parameters Brian Reeb CMB: polarization, tensor perturbations, and primordial gravity waves Andreas Reinsch WIMPs: what it is; why it works, i.e. abundance at freeze-out, basic limits on the mass from general arguments, why neutrinos can't be WIMPs Stefan Schell Supernovae as the origin of elements Henning Soller Accretion Disks (galaxy formation, star formation) |
| 9 May: |
I plan to add one class 5:30pm-7pm on Wednesday, 31 May.
Please let me know ASAP if you can't make it at this time.
I have posted a class presentation schedule. At the moment I have three students who agreed to give their presentations the week of 22-26 May, thanks! I'd like everyone else to select their preferred presentation day. Again, first-come, first-served. I'm going to keep Tuesday, 6 June, the last class of the quarter, for my last lecture and (attempt) to bring everything back together in one lecture. |
| 9 May: |
No class on Thursday, May 11. Go to the colloquium!
|
| 26 Apr: |
Some clarifications on the
off diagonal
elements of T_\mu\nu, and the dynamics of
a universe with a
negative cosmological constant.
|
| 13 Mar: |
Class will be CANCELED on June 8.
(Last class is Tuesday, June 6.) We will make it up by extending class to 11:50am for a couple of days that I will announce soon. Bring an energy bar. And, please, let me know NOW if you have a conflict with extending either Tuesday or Thursday's class. |
My email address:
kribs@uoregon.edu
This is the best way to reach me.