This book contains the lectures delivered at the Fourth Paris Cosmology Colloquium held at the Observatoire de Paris from June 4 - 9, 1997. This Colloquium ‘Phase Transitions in Cosmology’ is the first event of a EUROCONFERENCE series (‘Accompanying Measures’), with the support of the training and Mobility Programme of the Commision of the European Communities.The purpose of the Paris Cosmology Colloquia is to cover selected topics of high current interest in the interplay between cosmology and fundamental physics and to allow easy and fruitful interaction and communication between researchers in these areas. The main aim is to put in contact fundamental theoretical physics (including string theory) with real physical problems that arise in the study of the universe. The Paris Cosmology Colloquia are informal meetings which bring together physicists, astrophysicists and astronomers. Topics covered in this Fourth Paris Cosmology Colloquium included: cosmic microwave background, phase transitions in cosmology and evolution out of the equilibrium quantum fields, the value of the Hubble constant, fundamental strings in primordial cosmology, as well as other subjects of high current interest such as scaling laws in the interstellar medium and in the large scale structure, gravitational lensing and dark matter.

This book contains written versions of the presentations made at the 4th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter (IDM 2002), held in York, UK, in September 2002. The objective of this workshop series is to assess the status of work attempting to identify what constitutes dark matter — in particular, to consider the techniques being used, how successful they are, and what new techniques are likely to improve prospects for identifying likely dark matter candidates in the future. At IDM 2002 special emphasis was placed on recent results obtained in searches for baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter. The proceedings include reviews of major topics on dark matter, as well as short contributed talks.

This book presents reviews and new findings in the field of the very early universe, where the interests of particle theorists and astrophysicists meet. Also, WIMP search experiments are reported.

String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings, rather than the zero-dimensional point particles that form the basis for the standard model of particle physics. The phrase is often used as shorthand for Superstring theory, as well as related theories such as M-theory. By replacing the point-like particles with strings, an apparently consistent quantum theory of gravity emerges. Moreover, it may be possible to 'unify' the known natural forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear) by describing them with the same set of equations. Studies of string theory have revealed that it predicts higher-dimensional objects called branes. String theory strongly suggests the existence of ten or eleven (in M-theory) space-time dimensions, as opposed to the usual four (three spatial and one temporal) used in relativity theory.

This book introduces the basic concepts of particle cosmology and covers all the main aspects of the Big Bang Model (expansion of the Universe, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, Cosmic Microwave Background, large scale structures) and the search for new physics (inflation, baryogenesis, dark matter, dark energy). It also includes the majority of recent discoveries, such as the precise determination of cosmological parameters using experiments like WMAP and Planck, the discovery of the Higgs boson at LHC, the non-discovery to date of supersymmetric particles, and the search for the imprint of gravitational waves on the CMB polarization by Planck and BICEP. This textbook is based on the authors’ courses on Cosmology, and aims at introducing Particle Cosmology to senior undergraduate and graduate students. It has been especially written to be accessible even for those students who do not have a strong background in General Relativity and quantum field theory. The content of this book is organized in an easy-to-use style and students will find it a helpful research guide.

A thorough and up-to-date graduate textbook on the most promising theory of the universe - inflationary cosmology.

This book is an introductory text in General Relativity, while also focusing some solutions to the cosmological constant problem, which consists in an amazing 100 orders of magnitude discrepancy between the value of this constant in the present Universe, and its estimated value in the very early epoch. The author suggests that the constant is in fact, a time-varying function of the age of the Universe. The book offers a wealth of cosmological models, treats up to date findings, like the verification of the Lense-Thirring effect in the year 2004, and the recently published research by Cooperstock and Tieu (2005) suggesting that "dark" matter is not a necessary concept in order to explain the rotational velocities of stars around galaxies' nuclei. This is a mathematical cosmology textbook that may lead undergraduates, and graduate students to one of the frontiers of research, while keeping the prerequisites to a minimum, because most of the theory in the book requires only prior knowledge of Calculus and a University Physics course.

This book offers an introduction to General Relativity and its mathematical tools, together with an introduction to relativistic and scalar-tensor cosmologies. Part I deals with Tensor Calculus. Part II introduces General Relativity Theory, while Part III deals with Relativistic Cosmology. In Part IV we work Scalar-Tensor theories, concentrating in Cosmological Models. In the last chapters, the cosmological models presented, become more and more sophisticated, including some new cases, never published elsewhere, in which all fundamental "constants" are made to vary, with the age of the Universe, namely, the gravitational, the cosmological, the coupling Brans-Dicke "constants", the speed of light, Planck's "fine -structure "constant" alpha" etc. This is a mathematical cosmology textbook that may lead undergraduates, and graduate students, to one of the frontiers of research, while keeping the prerequisites to a minimum, because most of the theory in the book requires only prior knowledge of Calculus and a University Physics course.

This conference was dedicated to the memory of the great scientist and teacher I Ya Pomeranchuk on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It was multidisciplinary and covered those fields of physics where Pomeranchuk made outstanding contributions — including high energy physics, quantum field theory, theory of liquid helium, condensed matter physics, physics of electromagnetic processes in matter, and astrophysics. Most of the plenary talks and reports were given by Pomeranchuk's former students and coworkers.The proceedings volume provides an excellent review of some important areas of modern physics and reflects the Pomeranchuk school's contributions to modern physics. It is useful for graduate students, lecturers and researchers in high energy physics, quantum field theory and condensed matter physics.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)

This conference was dedicated to the memory of the great scientist and teacher I Ya Pomeranchuk on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It was multidisciplinary and covered those fields of physics where Pomeranchuk made outstanding contributions ? including high energy physics, quantum field theory, theory of liquid helium, condensed matter physics, physics of electromagnetic processes in matter, and astrophysics. Most of the plenary talks and reports were given by Pomeranchuk's former students and coworkers.The proceedings volume provides an excellent review of some important areas of modern physics and reflects the Pomeranchuk school's contributions to modern physics. It is useful for graduate students, lecturers and researchers in high energy physics, quantum field theory and condensed matter physics.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: ? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings? (ISTP? / ISI Proceedings)? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)