10. The Early Universe

10.1. The Very Early Universe and Inflation

10.1.1. Fundamental Particles

10.1.2. Hot and Cold Dark Matter

10.1.3. The Planck Limits on Time, Mass, and Length

10.1.4. Unification and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

10.1.5. Problems with the Standard Theory of the Big Bang

10.1.6. Inflation

10.1.7. Virtual Particles and the Energy of the Vacuum

10.1.8. The False Vacuum

10.1.9. Quantum Fluctuations and the Onset of Inflation

10.1.10. Solutions to the Problems of the Standard Big Bang Theory

10.1.11. Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry

10.1.12. The CMB and the Decoupling of Matter and Radiation

10.2. The Origin of Structure

10.2.1. Adiabatic and Isothermal Density Fluctuations

10.2.2. The Development of Adiabatic Density Fluctuations

10.2.3. Acoustic Oscillations and Damping

10.2.4. The Minimum Mass Required to Survive Damping

10.2.5. The Isothermal Density Fluctuations

10.2.6. The Jeans Mass after Recombination

10.2.7. The Timing of Structure Formation

10.2.8. Determining When the First Stars and Galaxies Formed

10.2.9. Top-Down Galaxy Formation and Hot Dark Matter

10.2.10. Bottom-Up Galaxy Formation and Cold Dark Matter

10.2.11. Cosmic Harmonies and Acoustic Oscillations

10.2.12. Fine-Tuning Our Understanding of Cosmic Harmonies

10.2.13. A Simple Model of Acoustic Oscillations

10.2.14. The Implications of the Angular Power Spectrum Peaks

10.2.15. Polarization of the CMB Anisotropies

10.2.16. Evidence of Harmonics in Large-scale Structure

10.3. Homework

Problem 1

Problem 1 goes here.