*Contemporary cosmology

The goal of this course is to give the student a solid background in the physics of the universe and it's evolution and to introduce topics at the forefront of current research such as dark matter, dark energy and large-scale structure formation.

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Homogeneous cosmology:
• Kinematics of the Universe and
• Dynamics of the Expansion

Early Universe:
• inflation
• cosmic neutrino background,
• big bang nucleosynthesis and
• recombination

Cosmological perturbations:
• statistics of random Gaussian fields
• initial perturbation generation linear evolution of fluctuations and matter power spectrum
• CMB
• Non-linear evolution and N-body simulations
• Lyman –alpha and 21 cm as cosmological probes
• Dark matter and dark energy

Knowledge and understanding:
Students will cover several topics in modern cosmology, such as: thermal history of the universe, and cosmological perturbations.

• Steven Weinberg, Cosmology, Oxford University Press, 2008 E-version
• Scott Dodelson, Modern Cosmology, Elsevier, 2003 E-version

Oral seminar (100%)

Gabrijela Zaharijas is an associate professor of Physics at the University of Nova Gorica and works within the Fermi LAT and CTA collaborations.

1. ‘Search for γ-ray emission from dark matter particle interactions from Andromeda and Triangulum Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope’, Eckner et al., Phys. Rev. D 99 (2019) 12, 123027, e-Print: 1904.10977 [astro-ph.HE]
2. ‘Unresolved Gamma-Ray Sky through its Angular Power Spectrum’, Fermi-LAT collaboration (including GZ), Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 (2018) 24, 241101, e-Print:1812.02079 [astro-ph.HE]
3. ‘A gamma-ray determination of the Universe’s star formation history’, Fermi-LAT collaboration (including GZ), Science 362 (2018) 6418, 1031-1034, e-Print:1812.01031 [astro-ph.HE]
4. ‘Extragalactic gamma-ray signal from dark matter annihilation: an appraisal’, Sefusatti et al. (including GZ), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 441 (2014) 3, 1861-1878, e-Print: 1401.2117 [astro-ph.CO]
   5.’Extragalactic gamma-ray signal from Dark Matter annihilation: a power spectrum based computation’, Serpico et al.(including GZ), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 421 (2012), e-Print:1109.0095 [astro-ph.CO]