In the last fifteen years, various areas of high energy physics, astrophysics and theoretical physics have converged on the study of cosmology so that any graduate student in these disciplines today needs a reasonably self-contained introduction to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This book presents the essential theoretical tools necessary to acquire a modern working knowledge of CMB physics. The style of the book, falling somewhere between a monograph and a set of lecture notes, is pedagogical and the author uses the typical approach of theoretical physics to explain the main problems in detail, touching on the main assumptions and derivations of a fascinating subject. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Why CMB Physics? (297 KB). Contents: Why CMB Physics?; From CMB to the Standard Cosmological Model; Problems with the SCM; SCM and Beyond; Essentials of Inflationary Dynamics; Inhomogeneities in FRW Models; The First Lap in CMB Anisotropies; Improved Fluid Description of Pre-Decoupling Physics; Kinetic Hierarchies; Early Initial Conditions?; Surfing on the Gauges; Interacting Fluids; Spectator Fields; Appendices: The Concept of Distance in Cosmology; Kinetic Description of Hot Plasmas; Scalar Modes of the Geometry; Metric Fluctuations: Gauge Independent Treatment. Readership: PhD students and researchers in physics, astrophysics and astronomy.

Spectacular observational breakthroughs, particularly by the WMAP satellite, have led to a new epoch of CMB science long after its original discovery. Taking a physical approach, the authors of this volume probe the problem of the 'darkness' of the Universe: the origin and evolution of dark energy and matter in the cosmos. Starting with the observational background of modern cosmology, they provide an accessible review of this fascinating yet complex subject. Topics discussed include the kinetics of the electromagnetic radiation in the Universe, the ionization history of cosmic plamas, the origin of primordial perturbations in light of the inflation paradigm, and the formation of anisotropy and polarization of the CMB. This fascinating review will be valuable to advanced students and researchers in cosmology.

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The series of texts composing this book is based on the lectures presented during the II José Plínio Baptista School of Cosmology, held in Pedra Azul (Espírito Santo, Brazil) between 9 and 14 March 2014. This II JBPCosmo has been entirely devoted to the problem of understanding theoretical and observational aspects of Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB).The CMB is one of the most important phenomena in Physics and a fundamental probe of our Universe when it was only 400,000 years old. It is an extraordinary laboratory where we can learn from particle physics to cosmology; its discovery in 1965 has been a landmark event in the history of physics.The observations of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation through the satellites COBE, WMAP and Planck provided a huge amount of data which are being analyzed in order to discover important informations regarding the composition of our universe and the process of structure formation.

Modern cosmology, packaged for use on physics courses.