A comprehensive and authoritative introduction to contemporary cosmology for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Understanding the largest physical structures in the universe is essential for the comprehension of the cosmos as a whole. We want to know how our world is formed, what it is made of and how it evolves.Galaxies, as the most visible constituents of the universe, are interesting probes for the cosmic time sequence. Their formation and development provides us with unique clues to the cosmic evolution. This is tightly connected with the hierarchical cosmic structure: groups and clusters of galaxies and their embedding into the large scale structure offer the opportunity to study the dependencies.Galaxy redshift surveys delineate most impressively a large cosmic web, which is composed of sheets and filaments. Grand simulations of the cosmic evolution complement these observations from the theoretical side and allow one quantify and compare various model universes.Quasar absorption line studies, gravitational lensing and even the X-ray background radiation provide important quantitative measures of the history of matter clustering. Finally, the microwave radiation traces very early structures, which are supposed to originate in the phase of inflationary expansion shortly after the big bang.This volume constituting the proceedings of the 12th Potsdam Cosmology Workshop, deals with the basic aspects of cosmological structure formation on the largest physical scales.

The amount of cosmological data has dramatically increased in the past decades due to an unprecedented development of telescopes, detectors and satellites. Efficiently handling and analysing new data of the order of terabytes per day requires not only computer power to be processed but also the development of sophisticated algorithms and pipelines. Aiming at students and researchers the lecture notes in this volume explain in pedagogical manner the best techniques used to extract information from cosmological data, as well as reliable methods that should help us improve our view of the universe.

Proceedings of the second Hellenic Cosmology Meeting, held in the National Observatory of Athens (Penteli, 19-20 April 2001)

A complete account of the fundamental techniques of general relativity and their application to cosmology. The book includes reviews of the different cosmological models and their classification, including such topics as causality and horizons, the cosmological parameters, observational tests and constraints of cosmology, symmetries and the large scale topology of space and space-time, and the use of supernovas as cosmological indicators. The perturbations to the cosmological models are discussed throughout the volume. The cosmic microwave background is presented, with an emphasis in secondary distortions in relation to cosmological models and large scale structures. Recent results on dark matter are summarised. A general review of primordial nucleosynthesis is given. Gravitational lensing is discussed in great detail. Most contributions show a balance between theory and observation. Readership: A solid background for students and researchers intending to work in the field of theoretical and observational cosmology.