100 years of mathematical cosmology: Models, theories, and problems

TL;DR

This survey traces a century of mathematical cosmology, highlighting key models, theories, and problems from Einstein's era to modern concepts like multiverses, string cosmology, and dark energy, emphasizing their interconnected development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, qualitative overview of the evolution of mathematical cosmology across four distinct periods, integrating diverse theories and recent advances.

Findings

Historical development of cosmological models

Emergence of modern theories like string cosmology

Identification of ongoing open problems in the field

Abstract

An elementary survey of mathematical cosmology is presented. We cover certain key ideas and developments in a qualitative way, from the time of the Einstein static universe in 1917 until today. We divide our presentation into four main parts, the first part containing important cosmologies discovered until 1960. The second period (1960-80) contains discussions of geometric extensions of the standard cosmology, singularities, chaotic behaviour, and the initial input of particle physics ideas into cosmology. Our survey for the third period (1980-2000) continues with brief descriptions of the main ideas of inflation, the multiverse, quantum, Kaluza-Klein, and string cosmologies, wormholes and baby universes, cosmological stability, and modified gravity. The last period which ends today includes various more advanced topics such as M-theoretic cosmology, braneworlds, the landscape, topological issues, the measure problem, genericity, dynamical singularities, and dark energy. We emphasize certain threads that run throughout the whole period of development of theoretical cosmology and underline their importance in the overall structure of the field. We end this outline with an inclusion of the abstracts of all papers contributed to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Theme Issue `The Future of Mathematical Cosmology'.