The Road to Precision Cosmology

Abstract

The past 50 years has seen cosmology go from a field known for the errors being in the exponents to precision science. The transformation, powered by ideas, technology, a paradigm shift and culture change, has revolutionized our understanding of the Universe, with the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm as its crowning achievement. I chronicle the journey of precision cosmology and finish with my thoughts about what lies ahead.

arXiv commentSubmitted to Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. To appear in volume 32; doi: 10.1146/annurev-nucl-111119-041046. Comments and suggestions welcome

References in corpus (58)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• Supersymmetric Dark Matter
• Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant
• The Complete Light-curve Sample of Spectroscopically Confirmed Type Ia Supernovae from Pan-STARRS1 and Cosmological Constraints from The Combined Pantheon Sample
• A Flat Universe from High-Resolution Maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe
• Planck 2018 results. I. Overview and the cosmological legacy of Planck
• Measurements of the Cosmological Parameters Omega and Lambda from the First 7 Supernovae at z >= 0.35
• Small-Scale Challenges to the $\Lambda$CDM Paradigm
• A History of Dark Matter
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing
• The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: 2015
• Signature of Gravity Waves in Polarization of the Microwave Background
• BICEP / Keck XIII: Improved Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and BICEP/Keck Observations through the 2018 Observing Season
• The Waning of the WIMP? A Review of Models, Searches, and Constraints
• A Probe of Primordial Gravity Waves and Vorticity
• Reconstructing the Inflaton Potential --- an Overview
• What would we learn by detecting a gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropy?
• Possible Gravitational Microlensing of a Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Experimental Searches for the Axion and Axion-like Particles
• Detection of Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background using DASI
• Leptogenesis as the origin of matter
• CDM Models with a Smooth Component
• Measurements of the Hubble Constant: Tensions in Perspective
• On the Cosmological Implications of the String Swampland
• One percent determination of the primordial deuterium abundance
• Planck 2015 results. XVII. Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity
• Determination of Inflationary Observables by Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Experiments
• CMB Lensing Reconstruction on the Full Sky
• Cosmological-Parameter Determination with Microwave Background Maps
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmology from Cosmic Shear and Robustness to Data Calibration
• Is There A Cosmological Constant?
• The Cosmological Constant is Back
• Big-bang Nucleosynthesis Enters the Precision Era
• The Cosmological Baryon Density from the Deuterium Abundance at a redshift z = 3.57
• Galaxy clusters discovered with a Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect survey
• Constraints on cosmic strings using data from the third Advanced LIGO-Virgo observing run
• Cosmic Microwave Background Probes Models of Inflation
• US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report
• A new kind of cyclic universe
• Kinematic Constraints to the Key Inflationary Observables
• Causality, randomness, and the microwave background
• Dark Energy and the CMB
• Cold Dark Matter Models
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: curved-sky weak lensing mass map reconstruction
• The Impact of New d(p,γ)He3 Rates on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• How Cold Dark Matter Theory Explains Milgrom's Law
• Cosmic Strings
• Recovering the Inflationary Potential
• Supersmoothing through Slow Contraction
• One Hundred Years of the Cosmological Constant: from 'Superfluous Stunt' to Dark Energy
• Beyond H_0 and q_0: Cosmology is no longer just two numbers
• Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!
• On the degree of scale invariance of inflationary perturbations
• Cosmic Inflation: The Most Powerful Microscope in the Universe
• Understanding BBN: the physics and its history

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Challenges for $\Lambda$CDM: An update
• The Cosmological Constant Problem and Running Vacuum in the Expanding Universe
• Running vacuum in the Universe: phenomenological status in light of the latest observations, and its impact on the ${\sigma }_8$ and $H_0$ tensions
• Phantom matter: a challenging solution to the cosmological tensions
• Running vacuum in QFT in FLRW spacetime: The dynamics of ${\rho }_{\mathrm{vac}}(H)$ from the quantized matter fields
• The Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna: Mission Studies and Science Case
• Stringy Running Vacuum Model and current Tensions in Cosmology
• CSST Cosmological Emulator I: Matter Power Spectrum Emulation with one percent accuracy to k = 10 h/Mpc
• Running vacuum in Brans-Dicke theory: a possible cure for the ${\sigma }_8$ and $H_0$ tensions
• Comparisons between fast algorithms for the continuous wavelet transform and applications in cosmology: the 1D case
• Structure Formation Paradigm and Axion Quark Nugget dark matter model
• Using machine learning to compress the matter transfer function $T(k)$
• Cosmology using numerical relativity
• Is cosmological data suggesting a nonminimal coupling between matter and gravity?
• The Impact of Early Massive Galaxy Formation on the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Extended Uncertainty Principle: A Deeper Insight into the Hubble Tension?
• Unexplained correlation between the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and the local matter density distribution
• Cosmology and general relativity (GR) in upper secondary school through new targeted teaching materials: a study on student learning and motivation
• Astrophysical uncertainties challenge 21-cm forecasts: A primordial black hole case study
• New vistas on the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector
• The Cosmological Constant Problem and the Extra Dimensions of $\mathcal{N}=2$ $\mathcal{D}=5$ Supergravity
• Neutron Stars as the Dark Matter detectors
• A Bayesian estimator for peculiar velocity correction in cosmological inference from supernovae data
• Expected redshift drift for tilted observers