Physics of the Early Universe: Proceedings of the Thirty Sixth Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics, Edinburgh, July 24 - August 11 1989

Front Cover
J.A Peacock, A.F Heavens, A.T Davies
CRC Press, Jan 1, 1990 - Science - 502 pages
The last decade has witnessed a breathtaking expansion of ideas concerning the origin and evolution of the universe. Researchers in cosmology thus need an unprecedented wide background in diverse areas of physics. Bridging the gap that has developed, Physics of the Early Universe explains the foundations of this subject. This postgraduate-/research-level volume covers cosmology, gauge theories, the standard model, cosmic strings, and supersymmetry.
 

Contents

Physical Cosmology
1
The Extragalactic Distance Scale
17
The Content of the Universe
36
The Hot Big Bang
52
Lagrangian field theory
78
Path integral formulation of field theory
98
Scattering amplitudes and Feynman diagrams
111
Renormalisation
124
Inflationary Universe Models and Cosmic Strings
281
Fluctuations from Inflation
309
Cosmological Models and Some Relevant Data
322
Cosmic Strings and Galaxy Formation
339
Cosmological Perturbations
361
The Boltzmann Equation in the Synchronous Gauge
379
Transfer Functions and Characteristic Scales
394
Nonlinear Gravitational Clustering
430

The Standard Model
145
The SU2 U1 Electroweak Theory
175
Shortcomings of the Standard Model and Possible Remedies
200
Grand Unification
213
Beyond gauge theories
242
Superstringinspired Grand Unified Theories
275
The Cold dark Matter Cosmogony
448
Supersymmetric Cosmology
465
Supergravity and Superstrings
481
List of participants addresses
497
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information