Andrei Linde
Stanford University
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Andrei Linde
“A monumental book written by a leading authority in particle physics and cosmology. Since publication of Weinberg's famous book Gravitation and Cosmology 35 years ago, there has been a real revolution both in cosmological theory and observations. A major effort of a great expert has been required to summarize the main developments in one book, and to make this presentation both highly accurate and accessible. This book will be greatly appreciated by a broad readership, ranging from students who just enter the field to experts in modern cosmology. It should be on the desk of every actively working cosmologist.” (from Amazon)
This book is unique in the detailed, self-contained, and comprehensive treatment that it gives to the ideas and formulas that are used and tested in modern cosmological research. It divides into two parts, each of which provides enough material for a one-semester graduate course. The first part deals chiefly with the isotropic and homogeneous average universe; the second part concentrates on the departures from the average universe. Throughout the book the author presents detailed analytic calculations of cosmological phenomena, rather than just report results obtained elsewhere by numerical computation. The book is up to date, and gives detailed accounts of topics such as recombination, microwave background polarization, leptogenesis, gravitational lensing, structure formation, and multifield inflation, that are usually treated superficially if at all in treatises on cosmology. Copious references to current research literature are supplied. Appendices include a brief introduction to general relativity, and a detailed derivation of the Boltzmann equation for photons and neutrinos used in calculations of cosmological evolution. Also provided is an assortment of problems.