Evolution of the cosmological large scale structure
The topic of the course is the formation and evolution of the cosmological large-scale structure and the distribution of galaxies on giga-parsec scales. I give an overview over the expansion-, thermal and growth history of the universe and discuss the need for dark matter and dark energy, which make up the surprising fraction of 96% of the total energy content of the universe. I show how structures form from seed perturbations in the cosmic density field by gravitational amplification, how measurements can track the growth of structure and how cosmological parameters can be determined.
Specifically, I will address these topics:
- Friedmann-Lemaitre cosmological models and dark energy
- dark matter, collisionless dynamics and differences to hydrodynamics
- cosmological density perturbations and correlation functions
- structure formation equations and their linearisation, solutions and nonlinearities
- observational probes of structure formation, gravitational lensing and secondary anisotropies in the microwave background