کتابخانه

Title: High Energy Astrophysics: An Introduction | Author(s): Thierry J.-L. Courvoisier (auth.) | Publisher: Springer | Year: 2013 | Edition: 1 | Language: English | Pages: 332 | ISBN: 978-3-642-30969-4, 978-3-642-30970-0 | Size: 8 MB | Extension: pdf

High-energy astrophysics has unveiled a Universe very different from that only known from optical observations. It has revealed many types of objects in which typical variability timescales are as short as years, months, days, and hours (in quasars, X-ray binaries, etc), and even down to milli-seconds in gamma ray bursts. The sources of energy that are encountered are only very seldom nuclear fusion, and most of the time gravitation, a paradox when one thinks that gravitation is, by many orders of magnitude, the weakest of the fundamental interactions. The understanding of these objects physical conditions and the processes revealed by high-energy astrophysics in the last decades is nowadays part of astrophysicists culture, even of those active in other domains of astronomy.

This book evolved from lectures given to master and PhD students at the University of Geneva since the early 1990s. It aims at providing astronomers and physicists intending to be active in high-energy astrophysics a broad basis on which they should be able to build the more specific knowledge they will need. While in the first part of the book the physical processes are described and derived in detail, the second part studies astrophysical objects in which high-energy astrophysics processes are crucial. This two-pronged approach will help students recognise physical processes by their observational signatures in contexts that may differ widely from those presented here.

Table of contents :
Front Matter....Pages i-xv
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The Framework....Pages 3-20
Radiation of an Accelerated Charge....Pages 21-29
Bremsstrahlung....Pages 31-46
Cyclotron Line Emission....Pages 47-55
Synchrotron Emission....Pages 57-73
Compton Processes....Pages 75-89
Comptonisation....Pages 91-104
Pair Processes....Pages 105-109
Particle Acceleration....Pages 111-123
Accretion....Pages 125-143
Radiation Inefficient Accretion Flows....Pages 145-154
Front Matter....Pages 155-155
Black Holes and Accretion Efficiency....Pages 157-189
Neutron Stars....Pages 191-203
Pulsars....Pages 205-224
The Hulse-Taylor Pulsar and Gravitational Radiation....Pages 225-233
X-Ray Binaries....Pages 235-263
X-Ray Binaries Evolution....Pages 265-274
Relativistic Jets....Pages 275-283
Gamma Ray Bursts....Pages 285-295
Active Galactic Nuclei....Pages 297-320
Front Matter....Pages 155-155
The Diffuse X-Ray Background and Other Cosmic Backgrounds....Pages 321-327
Back Matter....Pages 329-332