You are here: Home > Research > Theory Group
 

Theoretical Cosmology

A standard model of comology now exists which is based on the FRW universe. It is believe to be close to being spatially flat, contains both dark matter and dark energy, and the initial fluctuations which lead to formation of large-scale structure (LSS), were primarily created by inflation. We are interested in studying these pheonomena via their signatures on the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure. Moreoever, we are interested in the modifications to the physical laws which might also have observable effects on these observables, and other high energy events which may have

FRW Universe

Dark Matter

Dark matter was first suggested to explain the discrepacncy between the mass content inferred from the stellar/galactic content and that from dynamical measurements of the COMA cluster. Much latter it was realized that it is an essential ingredient of the standard cosmological model since the small-scale fluctuations in baryons cannot grow until the epoch recombination, a process known as Silk Damping. Nowadays a wide range of measurements, including adapations of the original methods, suggest that that the total matter density is around 30% of the critical density, whereas Big-Bang Nucleoynthesis (BBN) suggests that no much more than 5\% can be in the form of baryonic matter. This has lead to the suggestion that exotic non-baryonic matter exists. Moroever, most of this matter needs to be cold, meaning that its rest mass is much larger than its momentum. Such matter is called Cold Dark Matter or CDM for short.

Dark Energy

Inflation

Modifications to the fundamental laws

Topological defects

 
Last updated 08 Apr 2008