This course will have a heavy emphasis on the theory of cosmic microwave background anisotropies.
Requirements for this course are the Ast 321 or the physics dept cosmology course. Rudimentary GR knowledge will be assumed - FRW metric, tensor index manipulation.
There will be approximately 1-2 problems or paper reading per week as homework. There will be no final or final project but the final problem set will be more extensive.
Note I will be away October 7 so class will be cancelled that day. I will try to make up the difference later on.
There will be a special lecture November 11 by Stephan Meyer on CMB experiments.
Problem Set 1: hands on with CMBfast
Problem Set 2: Thomson scattering, tight coupling approximation
Problem Set 3: External potentials and the Green's Method
Problem Set 4: Polarization and coordinate transformations
Problem Set 5: Reading assignment: Bardeen (1980)
Problem Set 6: Scalar Fields I
Problem Set 7: Scalar Fields II
Problem Set 8: Final problem set