Cosmological Perturbations in Early and Late Cosmology-in Honor of Professor Maurizio Gasperini on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday

Dear Colleagues,

The study of cosmological perturbations, their origin, and dynamical evolution is one of the most powerful tools that we have to investigate the past history of our Universe, starting from its very primordial epoch to the later formation of large-scale structures. The classical and quantum basis of cosmological perturbation theory were presented by a number of pioneer researchers during the last century, first with Newtonian gravity, then with general relativity, and finally, the development of the inflationary scenario in the eighties. This theory has resulted in the development of countless and very important achievements, such as the explanation of the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, the prediction of a stochastic background of primordial gravitational radiation, and the generation of seeds for the production of primordial magnetic fields and possibly primordial black holes. When discussing the Universe in present times, it is necessary to take perturbations into account in order to extract the values of fundamental cosmological parameters, such as those that are related to dark energy and dark matter, that can be gained from these observations.

The aim of this Special Issue is twofold: (i) to provide a review of the main results and the present status of this field of research, a review that should be useful as a high-level introduction to this branch of modern cosmology, and (ii) to stimulate the discussion of open problems and possible future developments, also in view of forthcoming, high-precision, and observational data. Contributors are thus invited to present, apart from their past achievements on cosmological perturbations, suggestions of possible new avenues for improving our understanding of early and late-stage cosmological dynamics and for comparing the predictions of the standard cosmological model to those of alternative scenarios.

Prof. Dr. Luigi Tedesco
Prof. Dr. Giovanni Marozzi
Guest Editors

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• cosmological perturbation theory
• inflation
• CMB anisotropies
• structure formation
• relic gravitational waves
• detection of primordial GW backgrounds
• primordial black holes
• cosmological backreaction
• light–cone perturbations
• luminosity distance
• bouncing cosmology
• cosmological averaging prescriptions
• quantum cosmology
• string cosmology
• trans-planckian censorship conjecture