Modern Cosmology (Paperback)

Modern Cosmology, Third Edition provides a detailed introduction to the field of cosmology. Beginning with the smooth, homogeneous universe described by a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric, this trusted resource includes careful treatments of dark energy, big bang nucleosynthesis, recombination, and dark matter. The reader is then introduced to perturbations about an FLRW universe: their evolution with the Einstein-Boltzmann equations, their primordial generation by inflation, and their observational consequences: the acoustic peaks in the CMB; the E/B decomposition in polarization; gravitational lensing of the CMB and large-scale structure; and the BAO standard ruler and redshift-space distortions in galaxy clustering.

This revised third edition includes updates such as new sections on gravitational waves, line intensity mapping, and emergent analysis techniques; expanded sections of CMB secondaries; and revised figures and pedagogy. These revisions serve to enhance a comprehensive foundational text, as well as provide users with improvements that are aligned with recent advances in the field, as well as modern focuses in the classroom.

• Offers a unique and practical approach for learning how to perform cosmological calculations
• Includes new material on theory, simulations, and analysis of nonlinear structures
• Contains substantial updates on new developments in cosmology since the second edition, including new content on gravitational waves, as well as a new section on emergent analysis techniques and improved pedagogy around figures and imagery

Scott Dodelson is Head of the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a research fellow at Harvard before moving to Fermilab, the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon. He is the author of more than 200 papers on cosmology, most of which focus on the cosmic microwave background and the large-scale structure of the universe. Dodelson serves as the co-Chair of the Science Committee of the Dark Energy Survey.

Fabian Schmidt is a research group leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik (MPA) in Garching, Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago in 2009, and moved to MPA after fellowships at Caltech and Princeton. His work in cosmology (approximately 100 papers so far) focuses on theory, numerics, and analysis of quasilinear and nonlinear large-scale structure, and how we can learn from it about gravity, dark energy, and the physics of inflation.