The status of research on the dark components of our Universe from an observational and theoretical perspective

With a compact introduction to cosmological perturbation theory, fundamental to understand the main observational probes of dark matter and dark energy

Describes the status of cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure and high-redshift type IaSupernovae observations

Part I Cosmology
1 Relativistic Cosmology / Norbert Straumann
1.1 Introduction 1.2 Essentials of Friedmann-Lemaître models 1.3 Inflationary Scenario 1.4 Cosmological Perturbation Theory 1.5 Some Applications of Cosmological Perturbation Theory 1.6 Cosmological Perturbation Theory for Scalar Field Models 1.7 Quantization, Primordial Power Spectra 1.8 Tight Coupling Phase 1.9 General Relativistic Boltzmann Equation
2 Cosmology with Cosmic Microwave background and large-scale
structure observations /Licia Verde
2.1 Introduction 2.2 Cosmic microwave background and other data sets: what have we learned about cosmology? 2.3 CMB: How is the information extracted? 2.4 The dark side of large-scale structures 2.5 Conclusions
3 Cosmology with gravitational lensing / Alan Heavens
3.1 Introduction 3.2 Basics of lensing 3.3 Dark Matter 3.4 Cosmological lensing 3.5 Lensing in 3D 3.6 Dark Gravity 3.7 The Future 3.8 Appendix: the propagation of light through a weakly-perturbed universe
4 Cosmology with numerical simulations / Lauro Moscardini and Klaus Dolag
4.1 Introduction 4.2 N-Body codes 4.3 Hydrodynamical codes
Part II Dark Matter
5 Dark Matter Astrophysics / Guido D¿Amico, Marc Kamionkowski and Kris Sigurdson
5.1 Introduction 5.2 Astrophysical evidence 5.3 Basic properties of dark matter 5.4 Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) 5.5 Variations and additions 5.6 Some other particle dark-matter candidates 5.7 Conclusions
6 Dark matter: the particle physics view / Antonio Masiero
6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Standard Model of Particle Physics 6.3 The Dark Matter problem: experimental evidence 6.4 Lepton number violation and neutrinos as HDM candidates 6.5 Low-energy SUSY and DM 6.6 Changing the expansion rate in the past 6.7 Implications for dark matter in the CMSSM 6.8 Acknowledgements
7 Dark Matter Direct and Indirect Detection / Andrea Giuliani
7.1 Introduction 7.2 Direct Detection of WIMPs via Scattering off Ordinary Matter 7.3 Indirect Detection via Annihilation of Dark Matter Particles 7.4 Conclusions
Part III Dark Energy
8 Dark energy: investigation and modeling / Shinji Tsujikawa
8.1 Introduction 8.2 Observational constraints on dark energy 8.3 Cosmological constant 8.4 Modified matter models 8.5 Modified gravity models 8.6 Cosmic acceleration without dark energy 8.7 Conclusions
Index