Subsections
[Cr:4, Lc:3, Tt:1, Lb:0]
Knowledge of the content of 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.
- 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.
- Overview of the early universe, Primordial nucleosynthesis,
decoupling of neutrinos, recombination and CMBR. Observational
evidence. Inflation and its implications.
- 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.
- 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)
