INSTRUCTOR

Pierre Sikivie
Office: NPB 2063
email: sikivie@phys.ufl.edu
telephone: 392.1923

CLASS TIMES: MWF 9:35-10:25am, in NPB 2165

OFFICE HOURS: MWF 10:40-11:30am, in NPB 2063

COURSE OUTLINE

1. Overview
- summary of observations
- why not baryons
- why not neutrinos
- cold dark matter

2. The candidates
- axions
- weakly interacting massive particles
- sterile neutrinos
- others

3. Density perturbations
- non-relativistic treatment
- general relativistic treatment
- cosmic microwave background and large scale structure observations

4. The structure of galactic halos
- the isothermal model
- the caustic ring model
- N body simulations

READING MATERIALS:
Purchase of a textbook is not required. The following books will be used extensively, however:

- "Particle Physics and Cosmology: Dark Matter", Vol. 6 of Current Physics Sources and Comments, edited by M. Srednicki, North-Holland 1990.

- "Gravitation and Cosmology", by S. Weinberg, Wiley 1972.

- "Galactic Dynamics", by J. Binney and S. Tremaine, Princeton U. Press 1987.

- "The Early Universe", by E. Kolb and M. Turner, Addison-Wesley 1990.

- "Principles of Physical Cosmology", by P.J.E. Peebles, Princeton University Press 1993.

- "Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics", by L. Bergstrom and A. Goobar, Wiley 1999.

- "Modern Cosmology", by S. Dodelson, Academic Press 2003.

- "Physical Foundations of Cosmology", by V. Mukhanov, Cambridge U. Press 2005.

PREREQUISITES:

The core courses of our graduate program

GRADING:

The final grade will be based on homework (60%) and a final exam (40%). Instead of taking the final exam, a student may give a lecture on an agreed-upon topic related to the course material.