Summary
The remarkable result of contemporary astrophysical cosmology has been the development of the concordance ΛCDM model which can account for the very extensive data from many different wavebands. The values of the parameters which come out of these studies are, however, very perplexing and result in a number major problems. These include: the horizon problem, the flatness problem, the baryon-asymmetry problem, the primordial fluctuation problem and the values of the cosmological parameters. Various solutions to these problems are described including the anthropic cosmological principle and the inflationary paradigm for the very early Universe. The origin of the primordial fluctuation spectrum of perturbations within the context of the inflationary paradigm is described in simple physical terms by analogy with the quantum harmonic oscillator. Baryogenesis and the Planck era complete the discussion.
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Longair, M.S. (2023). The Very Early Universe. In: Galaxy Formation. Astronomy and Astrophysics Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65891-8_20
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