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The Cosmic Microwave Background, by R. Durrer

Professor David Matravers

To cite this article: Professor David Matravers (2009) The Cosmic Microwave Background, by R.
Durrer, , 50:5, 604-605, DOI: 10.1080/00107510902884410

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Published online: 22 Jul 2009.

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604 Book reviews
Field Theory – A Path Integral Approach, by A. Das,
Singapore, World Scientific, 2006, xiv þ 361 pp.,
£28.00 (paperback), ISBN 9812568484. Scope: text-
book. Level: graduate.
Field Theory – A Path Integral Approach is a graduate
level textbook aimed at teaching field theoretical topics
from a path integral perspective. The book starts with
a review of the basic formalism of quantum mechanics
and path integrals, treating the quantum driven
harmonic oscillator as a concrete example. The book
then moves onto a variety of applications of the basic
formalism, covering fermionic systems and Grassmann
variables, the double well, supersymmetry, gauge
theories, and the Ising model, among other topics.
The wide variety of topics covered mean that some
later chapters can be read almost independently of
other later chapters, but prerequisites for a student
aiming to understanding the core of the book would
include quantum theory, contour integration, at least
some familiarity with the use of Green’s functions to
solve differential equations, special relativity, and
statistical mechanics. Some of the chapters require a
little more – anyone tackling the Gauge theory chapter,
for example, would benefit from some prior exposure
to Lie Groups. The book would be relevant for any
students who need to be familiar with quantum field
theoretic methods, including nuclear and particle
physicists and condensed matter theorists.
The text arose from a series of graduate lectures
delivered by the author at the University of
Rochester. I would describe the book as more of a
technically motivated compendium of path integral
methods applied to a variety of topics, rather than a
physically motivated development of field theory.
This gives the book the advantage of being concise,
and hence it could work well as a reference for more
experienced researchers wishing to either refresh their
understanding or quickly understand the basics of a
new topic. Less experienced students, however,
would probably require additional guidance from a
tutor, as the book sometimes advances at lightning
pace. This is especially true for those students who
are not totally at ease with some of the prerequisites,
as they would probably also not fully appreciate the
mathematical subtleties that surround the methods
used.
The book is of course written for the usual class of
physicist who is prepared to use path integrals, and so
it will not appeal to those mathematically inclined
physicists who prefer the rigour of a text such as
Streater and Wightman’s treatise on spin statistics.
However, it may be of interest to those physicists who
need a crash course or refresher in some of the
formalism of field theory and some of its key ideas, and
could be a reasonable companion to a lecture course
on related topics.
Dr Shashank Virmani
Imperial College London
s.virmani@imperial.ac.uk
Ó 2009, Shashank Virmani
The Cosmic Microwave Background, by R. Durrer,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, xii þ
401 pp., £40.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 0 521 84704 9.
Scope: textbook/reference text. Level: advanced.
What are the differences between a textbook and a
reference text or manual? It should be an easy question
to answer, at least it is for school and undergraduate
studies, but as things get more advanced the differences
decrease. For school and undergraduate studies the
primary intention of a textbook is to support teaching
so details are omitted and arguments are simplified to
communicate with the learner. At the more advanced
level there is not much difference between Ph.D.
students, post-docs and researchers who need to learn
some new material. The Ph.D. student can expect
lectures to support learning but the book should be
useful for self-study. At that level the intention of an
advanced level textbook should be no different from
that of a junior level text. The contents need to bring
together ideas and arguments from the research
literature in a comprehensive and relatively easily
understood way, almost always at the expense of some
detail and completeness. In contrast a reference text or
manual should give complete arguments and accurate
complete formulae, ideally with enough background
for the user to follow the derivations. I raise this
because an advanced level Ph.D. student said to me
that, Durrer’s book on the CMB [Cosmic Microwave
Background] will be extremely useful because all the
perturbation formulae are derived in explicit form and
collected together in one place. She added that she
would prefer to learn the subject from a less demand-
ing textbook. My own reading places Durrer’s book as
a very useful advanced reference textbook but the
demands on the reader’s knowledge of physics and
mathematics are high.
The study of the cosmic microwave background is
sufficiently important and complicated to justify a
detailed text devoted to it. The existence of back-
ground radiation in the universe at a temperature of
about 10 K that was left over from the big bang was
first proposed in the late 1940s. It was later (1965)
detected by chance and earned its discoverers a Nobel
Prize in 1978. Even then the full significance of what
had been stumbled upon was not fully appreciated.
 Contemporary Physics
The equipment available was limited to detecting the
radiation and measuring its temperature. It was soon
found to conform to expectations; the spectrum is
black body with a temperature of 2.725 K. The great
advance came in 1992 when, with greater resolution
available and with precise analysis, temperature varia-
tions across the sky were measured. This was a
remarkable achievement because the variations are of
order 10–4 K and earned its discoverers a Nobel Prize
in 2006. In order to identify the source of these
variations in the radiation background we have to
know about the paths of photons from the big bang to
the detector. According to models of the evolution of
the universe the photons were coupled to matter in the
early, extremely hot, phase of its history. Matter itself
was in the process of accumulating near the small over-
densities arising from quantum fluctuations during
inflation. The distribution of these small fluctuations
formed the seeds for the matter distribution today, e.g.
in galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Also at about a
temperature of 3000 K the photons decoupled from
the matter distribution taking with them an imprint of
the matter distribution. It is this imprint that we detect
in the cosmic microwave background. The interplay of
theory and data works in a beautiful way and has lead
to better and better estimates for the parameters in the
models of the universe and in linking the very large, the
universe today, to the smallest scales of quantum
physics which determined the original patterns in the
background radiation.
In Durrer’s book the first chapter contains a rapid
run through the standard background to modern
cosmology covering the isotropic and homogeneous
universe models through recombination and decou-
pling, nucleosynthesis and gives a brief outline of
inflation models. This section is expected to be covering
ground that the reader has seen before. The contents are
complimented by an Appendix on General Relativity
which is also very brief but comprehensive. The second
chapter deals with perturbation theory in detail at first
order and mainly in the longitudinal gauge. The way
gauge invariance in perturbation theory is explained is
brief and adequate for first order perturbations but it is
hard to extend it to higher orders. The chapter is
detailed and contains useful insights and examples.
Chapter 3 describes the sources of fluctuations during
inflation, the seeds for the structure seen in the cosmic
microwave background. Chapter 4 covers kinetic theory
leading to the perturbed Boltzmann equation and a full
system of perturbation equations for a LCDM cosmol-
ogy. Chapter 5 deals with polarisation, which is a slight
diversion from the main focus of the book. The
treatment makes use of the representation theory of
spin-weighted spherical harmonics, a brief study of
which is the subject of one of the appendices. Chapter 6
605
devoted to parameter estimation brings in a number of
statistical techniques in current use and takes us to the
source of the most exciting new results at the interface
between theory and observations. The chapter ends with
a brief discussion of different possible sources of
structure in the CMB such as topological defects. The
last two chapters deal with topics, which are not
currently central to the subject but are becoming
increasingly important as resolution becomes finer.
They are lensing of the CMB radiation and spectral
distortions on the CMB by scattering. There are
exercises (36 in all) at the end of each chapter, which
extend or compliment the material in the chapter;
answers to 6 are given in an Appendix.
I have a few grumbles. A glossary of symbols with
definitions would be useful because many letters are
used and sometimes with different roles in different
chapters. It is a nuisance that the references to
Jackson’s book, Classical Electrodynamics, are to the
1975 edition and not to the revised edition of 1998.
There are some typographical errors which, in time,
will be noted on the author’s web site; it is a pity that
more time was not spent on the editing and reading the
proofs. Finally the index is rather brief for a textbook
or handbook.
For researchers and students who want an up to
date and solid foundation on the theory behind the use
of measurements of the cosmological microwave
background to calibrate cosmological models, Durrer’s
book fits the bill. Although the pages are dominated by
calculations and formulae it is pleasant to read and I
enjoyed working with it.
Professor David Matravers
University of Portsmouth
david.matravers@port.ac.uk
Ó 2009, David Matravers
Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy, by J. Freidberg,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, xvii þ
671 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN 0521851076. Scope:
monograph. Level: senior undergraduates, beginning
postgraduates and researchers.
With the recent start to the construction of ITER, an
international project to build a fusion machine which
is intended, for the first time, to demonstrate energy
gain in a magnetically confined plasma, this survey of
fusion energy and the underlying plasma physics is
very timely. It is becoming increasingly clear that we
need to wean ourselves away from dependence on
fossil fuels and advances in fusion science over the
last decade, together with the launching of the ITER