The Cosmic Microwave Background
Abstract
Description
This set of lectures provides an overview of the basic theory and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background. Topics include a brief historical review; the physics of temperature and polarization fluctuations; acoustic oscillations of the primordial plasma; the space of inflationary cosmological models; current and potential constraints on these models from the microwave background; and constraints on inflation.
52 pages. Lectures given at the Italian Society of Gravitational Physics summer school in Como, Italy, May 2000
52 pages. Lectures given at the Italian Society of Gravitational Physics summer school in Como, Italy, May 2000