Cosmology literature
Most of time, everything is homogeneous and isotropic, until it’s not…
Reference Books
Cosmology - Daniel Baumann
Introductory State-of-the-art
Introduction to Cosmology - Barbera Ryden
Introductory
I came across this book after I was done with my Cosmology coursework. I had seen the book mentioned a few times, but I stuck with Dodelson. This is a better first read if you are new to the subject. All important topics are covered extensively. An excellent linear read! Complements Baumann’s lecture notes well.
Modern Cosmology - S. Dodelson
Intermediate
Expert in the field. His comments, even the smallest ones, are precious. Any topic you don’t understand, you can come to this book. The Boltzmann equations (3 and 4) and Inflation (chapter 6) sections are worth a read.
The Early Universe - Kolb and Turner
Advanced Old-is-gold
Lecture notes
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David tong’s lecture notes
Introductory
Probably the best lecture notes available in terms of doing everything from scratch, especially for someone who is getting first exposure to the topic. Like all his other notes, these are a masterpiece. No General relativity is required (He does everything Newtonian). Provides flawless intuition on the subject. Excellent when used as reference notes for a formal course. Being lecture notes, they do not have inline exercises. Emphasising what important results are and what a buildup is can get hard if one does not have previous exposure to the subject.
🌟 Daniel Baumann’s lecture notes
Introductory
No matter what Cosmology course you are doing, these will be there for you. Appendix for General relativity provided, targeted towards the most important results needed for cosmology. Step-by-step computation of results, a lot of diagrams, and boxed paragraphs could be just taken for granted/skipped for the first read. Has lecture “scripts”, which are extensive summaries of each lecture. Very useful for being able to summarise what you just learned.
Piatella’s lecture notes
University of Helsinki - Hannu Kurki-Suonio
Course webpages
