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.