Product Description

Enormous progress has been made in inflationary cosmology in the past few years and this book is the first to provide a modern and unified overview of the subject. Coverage examines every aspect of inflationary cosmology and carefully compares predictions with the latest observations, including those of the cosmic microwave background, the clustering and velocities of galaxies and the epoch of structure formation. Problems are included throughout to help the student develop a thorough understanding. An ideal introduction to what promises to be one of the most fruitful topics of research in science in the next decade, this volume will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, theoretical physics and applied mathematics.

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An excellent textbook        Rating:

For those readers looking for a serious textbook on cosmological inflation, this is it!But of course, they should beware that it is fully technical, and has nothing to do with Andrew Liddle's small book, "An Introduction to Modern Cosmology". This is the real stuff, written by two experts who were instrumental in the development of the "slow-roll inflation" paradigm, and summing up all the latest developments in modern cosmology.
Starting with a small introduction about the hot Big Bang, the authors go on to an in-depth treatment of inflation and its consequences. The simplest model is then exposed and developed into its extensions, such as the Lambda-CDM model, the currently accepted model of inflationary cosmology.
Needless to say, the book offers also a fairly detailed treatment of the CMB and its anisotropies, acoustic oscillations and perturbation theory, and the CMB power spectrum, which are the latest tools in cosmological research.
However, those who are looking for a complete treatment of CMB anisotropies will not find it here.They could turn, for instance, to many articles on arxiv, e.g.the one by Ruth Durrer (astro-ph/0109522)which develops this subject in more detail.
All in all, this book by Liddle and Lyth will probably serve as a textbook on cosmology for the coming ten years.

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