• PHYS4080 (Frontiers in Astrophysics)

Lecture Notes: Thermal Freezeout and Particle Astrophysics section

• 01: Intro to particle astrophysics: Thermal Freezeout
• 02: Weak decoupling, neutrinos, recombination
• 03: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Slides with relevant plots for 02/03 here
• 04: Baryogenesis

Lecture Slides: LCDM and Dark Matter section

• 05: Cosmological Parameters, ΛCDM, extensions, particle cosmology
• 06: Dark Matter 1: Overview, distributions, production
• 07: Dark Matter 2: Direct detection
• 08: Dark Matter 3: Indirect detection, colliders
• See also colloquium slides:
  • Slides

Assignment:

• For the dark matter thermal production assignment, some hints and code snippets are given on the UQ astro github page:
• github.com/AstroUQ/ThermalRelics-PHYS4080

Texts:

• Schneider, Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology: An Introduction
  • Main book for the course, available from library
  • Sections 8.7-8.8 covers cosmological parameters section
  • Chapter 4.4
• Kolb & Turner, The early universe
  • A detailed and high-level textbook. Goes well beyond what’s required for the course
  • Those who are interested are encouraged to read
    • Ch. 4 on big-bang nucleosynthesis
    • Ch. 5 on thermal production of dark matter
• Weinberg’s Cosmology book

Optional reading:

• Peebles, Anomalies in Physical Cosmology, arXiv:2208.05018
• Spergel, The dark side of cosmology: Dark matter and dark energy, Science 347, 1100 (2015)
• Bertone & Hooper, A History of Dark Matter, Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 45002 (2018), arXiv:1605.04909