Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notation, units and conventions
- 1 A short review of standard and inflationary cosmology
- 2 The basic string cosmology equations
- 3 Conformal invariance and string effective actions
- 4 Duality symmetries and cosmological solutions
- 5 Inflationary kinematics
- 6 The string phase
- 7 The cosmic background of relic gravitational waves
- 8 Scalar perturbations and the anisotropy of the CMB radiation
- 9 Dilaton phenomenology
- 10 Elements of brane cosmology
- Index
1 - A short review of standard and inflationary cosmology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notation, units and conventions
- 1 A short review of standard and inflationary cosmology
- 2 The basic string cosmology equations
- 3 Conformal invariance and string effective actions
- 4 Duality symmetries and cosmological solutions
- 5 Inflationary kinematics
- 6 The string phase
- 7 The cosmic background of relic gravitational waves
- 8 Scalar perturbations and the anisotropy of the CMB radiation
- 9 Dilaton phenomenology
- 10 Elements of brane cosmology
- Index
Summary
In this chapter we will recall some basic notions of standard and inflationary cosmology that will be used later, in a string cosmology context. We will assume that the reader is already familiar with the geometric formalism of the theory of general relativity, and with the main observational aspects of large-scale astronomy and astrophysics. We will discuss, in particular, the various assumptions of the so-called standard cosmological model, the problems associated with its initial conditions, and the basic aspects of its “inflationary” completion driven by the potential energy of a cosmic scalar field (further details on the inflationary scenario will be supplied in Chapter 8). This presentation aims at a self-contained study of the early cosmological dynamics: for a more detailed introduction, and a deeper analysis of the topics discussed in this chapter, we refer the interested reader to [1, 2, 3] for the standard cosmological model, and to [4, 5, 6] for the inflationary scenario.
The standard cosmological model
The standard cosmological model, developed during the second half of the last century, was inspired by two fundamental observational results: the recession of galaxies, discovered by Hubble [7], and the presence of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), discovered by Penzias and Wilson [8].
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- Chapter
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- Elements of String Cosmology , pp. 1 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007