The Cosmic Microwave Background
arXiv:astro-ph/0102402
Abstract
This set of lectures provides an overview of the basic theory and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background. Topics include a brief historical review; the physics of temperature and polarization fluctuations; acoustic oscillations of the primordial plasma; the space of inflationary cosmological models; current and potential constraints on these models from the microwave background; and constraints on inflation.
52 pages. Lectures given at the Italian Society of Gravitational Physics summer school in Como, Italy, May 2000