Particles in the Dark Universe: A Student’s Guide to Particle Physics and Cosmology

This book provides a comprehensive and instructive coverage of particle physics in the early universe, in a logical way. It starts from the thermal history of the universe by investigating some of the main arguments such as Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the inflation, before treating in details the direct and indirect detection of dark matter and then some aspects of the physics of neutrino. Following, it describes possible candidates for dark matter and its interactions.

The book is targeted at theoretical physicists who deal with particle physics in the universe, dark matter detection and astrophysical constraints, and at particle physicists who are interested in models of inflation or reheating. This book offers also material for astrophysicists who work with quantum field theory computations.

All that is useful to compute any physical process is included: mathematical tables, all the needed functions for the thermodynamics of early universe and Feynman rules. In light of this, this book acts as a crossroad between astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology.

Yann Mambrini is Research Director at the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in the Irene Joliot Curie Laboratory, at University Paris-Saclay. His research interests concern the field of particle physics and fundamental interactions. He works actively on extensions of the Standard Model, from Supergravity to Grand Unified Theories, and more specifically on their cosmological consequences, especially involving dark matter aspects. He was awarded with the Prix d'Excellence Scientifique of the National Research Council in 2010, 2014 and 2018. Currently, he is lecturing at Ecole Normal Supérieure. One of his passion is the concept of time, from its measurement to its nature, and the history of ideas in physics. He wrote several popular books on the subject: Histoires de Temps and Le Siècle des révolutions Scientifiques, Ed. Ellipses and Newton à la Plage, Ed. Dunod. He shares this passion with magic, with which he presents shows for the general public mixing illusions, time and mysteries of the universe.