PHY654: Astrophysics II: Galaxies and Cosmology

        [Cr:4, Lc:3, Tt:1, Lb:0]

Course Outline

Knowledge of the content of PHY635 and PHY637 is essential to follow this course.

• Structure of the Galaxy, components of a galaxy. Stellar components: bulge, disk, halo. Bars and thick disks. Gaseous components: hot halo gas, warm ionized medium, warm neutral medium, HII regions, molecular clouds. Dust: absorption and characteristics. Super massive black holes and nuclear activity.

• Morphological and spectral classifications of galaxies. Characteristic scales. Luminosity and density profiles.

• Scaling relations: Tully Fisher relation, Fundamental plane for elliptical galaxies.
• Inter-stellar medium (ISM), components of ISM, signature of different components: absorption and emission lines, magnetic fields, Faraday rotation, synchrotron radiation. Mapping the ISM in the Galaxy, probing ISM in other galaxies.

• Oort's constants, rotation of the Galaxy, rotation curves of other galaxies, missing matter.

• Galactic dynamics: collisionless evolution, potential density pairs for axi-symmetric and non-axially symmetric systems. Orbits and conserved quantities. Distribution function. Relation between orbits and photometric properties of galaxies.

• Star formation in galaxies, feedback from star formation. Evolution of star formation in galaxies, evolution of galaxies.

• Accretion disks and AGNs. Models of AGN activity. Observations and the unification models.

• Mergers of galaxies, dynamical friction, violent relaxation. Gas flows and AGN activity.

• Clusters and groups of galaxies, intra-cluster medium, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.

• Distribution of galaxies, large scale structure, description of large scale structure in terms of power spectrum, correlation function.

• Inter-galactic medium, observational evidence, evolution. Missing baryons.

  /bf Review of Cosmology://

• Hubble's law, expansion of the universe, comoving coordinates. Cosmological principle, Friedman-Robertson-Walker-Lemaitre model, Cosmological models. Distance redshift relation. Luminosity distance and angular diameter distance. Measurement of Hubble's constant, age of the universe, distance measurements and estimation of cosmological parameters. Accelerated expansion.

• Early universe, Primordial nucleosynthesis, decoupling of neutrinos, recombination and CMBR. Observational evidence. Inflation and its implications.

• Newtonian limit, non-relativistic perturbation theory, growth of perturbations in the linear limit. Nonlinear growth of perturbations: Zel'dovich approximation and spherical collapse.

• The dark ages, formation of first galaxies, reionization, evolution of the inter galactic medium. cosmic inventory.

Recommended Reading

• James Binney & Scott Tremaine, Galactic Dynamics, Princeton University Press (2008)
• James Binney & Michael Merrifield, Galactic Astronomy, Princeton University Press (1998)
• S. Weinberg, Cosmology, Oxford University Press (2008).
• P. J. E. Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology, Princeton University Press (1993).
• T. Padmanabhan, Theoretical Astrophysics: Volume 3, Galaxies and Cosmology, Cambridge University Press (2002).
• S. Dodelson, Modern Cosmology, Academic Press (2003).
• Bradley W. Carroll & Dale A. Ostlie, Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, 2nd Edition, Addison Wesley (2006)