This book has its roots in a series of collaborations in the last decade at the interface between statistical physics and cosmology. The speci?c problem which initiated this research was the study of the clustering properties of galaxies as revealed by large redshift surveys, a context in which concepts of modern statistical physics (e. g. scale-invariance, fractality. . ) ?nd ready application. In recent years we have considerably broadened the range of problems in cosmology which we have addressed, treating in particular more theoretical issues about the statistical properties of standard cosmological models. What is common to all this research, however, is that it is informed by a perspective and methodology which is that of statistical physics. We can say that, beyond its speci?c scienti?c content, this book has an underlying thesis: such interdisciplinary research is an exciting playground for statistical physics, and one which can bring new and useful insights into cosmology. Thebook does not represent a ?nal point, but in our view, a marker in the development of this kind of research, which we believe can go very much further in the future. Indeed as we complete this book, new developments - which unfortunately we have not been able to include here - have been made on some of the themes described here. Our focus in this book is on the problem of structure in cosmology.
The physics of scale-invariant and complex systems is a novel interdisciplinary field. Its ideas allow us to look at natural phenomena in a radically new and original way, eventually leading to unifying concepts independent of the detailed structure of the systems. The objective is the study of complex, scale-invariant, and more general stochastic structures that appear both in space and time in a vast variety of natural phenomena, which exhibit new types of collective behaviors, and the fostering of their understanding. This book has been conceived as a methodological monograph in which the main methods of modern statistical physics for cosmological structures and density fields (galaxies, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, etc.) are presented in detail. The main purpose is to present clearly, to a workable level, these methods, with a certain mathematical accuracy, providing also some paradigmatic examples of applications. This should result in a new and more general frameworkfor the statistical analysis of the many new data concerning the different cosmic structures which characterize the large scale Universe and for their theoretical interpretation and modeling.
