Oh yes, I am aware of that. But thing is, I want to somehow show the comitee that I have some idea of what has been done in the past years. Which indeed, includes lots of misguided work after the BICEPS2 affaire but which clearly dominated the discussion past year.
Thanks. Yes, that kind of reviews. There has been some considerable activity since then, tho. For example, I recall some non minimal coupled Higgs driven inflation that was more or less popular not so long ago. Also the funky models with high production of tensor modes from the BICEPS2 rage from...
I am currently writing a funding essay for a (taught) postgraduate degree and I'd rather have a refresher on modern cosmology. As such, is anyone around aware of a recent early universe review article in the arxiv? I am not keen on learning the "basic stuff", just a review article of what has...
I don't know if it will still help you after so many months on your original post. Anyway, assuming you are a physics student and want the real deal, try these ones:
Beginner: An Introduction to Modern Cosmology, Andrew Liddle
Intermediate: Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology: A Basic...
Quite likely. For the material listed on that syllabus you mostly need the "usual qm stuff": Dirac notation, Hilbert spaces, a bit about solutions of Schrodinger equation (mostly the free particle and the harmonic oscillator), angular momentum and perturbation theory. Aditionally, a bit on...
Well, if your school has a QFT course being offered there is usually no impediment for you to attend it if you are an undegrad (I have seen it).
Now, what you need to know cold is non relativistic quantum mechanics (specially the harmonic oscillator using the ladder operators and the...
Why not some graduate work in applied physics? Doing a PhD and then a masters might not even be possible (at least funding-wise) in some places. I am totally sure that you can find a place where research on the topics you mentioned is done in applied physics departments.
If you want to do hep-exp you will certainly need to do a phd thesis in the area, there is a lot of competition for the available posdoc positions and you won't be in a good position if you do a phd in lasers (just to put some example).
Now, getting a phd in hep-exp is not as complicated as...
It fits very well your interests. If you are into particle stuff Michael Dine, Howard Haber and Tom Banks are there. If you go to ucsc and do really well in courses and find a nice research project your chances of getting to any place for a phd will be good (asumming you do a good gre and all...
I guess that the top figure is indeed Kip Thorne. Now, in the very particular topic of black holes I guess Robert Wald (from Chicago) is probably the leading world figure. Other names you might consider are Charles Misner at Maryland and if you don't mind going up north then Werner Israel at...
At what level you want to read? For popular level books try "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan H. Guth.
At undergrad level "An Introduction to Modern Cosmology" by Andrew Liddle only requires calculus and elementary physics. If you are getting serious then learn GR, a very accesible book is...
The more maths you know, the better. But rather than going for a one year in AT and AG I would rather study from a more focused source like the book from Nakahara.
Overall, the level of maths you must know is around the same of Mathematics for Physics: A Guided Tour for Graduate Students by...
Now that you are talking about the MSc at Nottingham. Anyone around has any idea of how is this course compared to similar ones? I have an offer there, although I am more interested in string cosmology.