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Books > Science & Mathematics > Physics > Applied physics & special topics > Astrophysics
Cosmic rays consist of elementary particles with enormous energy which originate from outside our solar system and constantly hit the Earth's atmosphere. Where do these cosmic rays originate? How does nature accelerate the cosmic-ray particles to energies with orders of magnitude beyond the limits of manmade particle accelerators? What can we learn by measuring the interactions of the cosmic rays with the atmosphere? Digital radio-antenna arrays offer a promising, complementary measurement method for high-energy cosmic rays. This thesis reports on substantial advances in the development of the radio technique, which will be used to address these questions in future experiments.
This book is a synopsis of modern deep-field astronomy, based on the powerful telescopes and instruments developed in recent years. It is organized along topical themes, such as the extragalactic background radiation at different wavelengths, the evolution of galaxies, the history of star formation, the nature of absorbers, the reionization of the intergalactic medium, the validity of photometric redshifts, gravitational lensing, and clustering of galaxies. Stellar and substellar objects were not neglected, however, and one session was devoted to nearby bodies such as trans-Neptunian solar system objects, brown dwarfs, and stars with special characteristics.
The origin of the most energetic particles observed in nature is one of the major unresolved questions in modern astrophysics. Theoretical speculations range from electromagnetic acceleration in some unknown astrophysical source to as yet undiscovered particle physics beyond the Standard Model. These speculations have also lead to the development of new detection concepts and experimental projects, some of which are currently under construction. The present volume consists of a self-contained set of lectures which cover most of these aspects: from the speculative origins and the acceleration and propagation mechanisms to a discussion of the detection techniques. It emphasizes the strong interdisciplinarity of this topic and highlights the many open questions. This volume is intended for students entering this field and for professional astronomers and particle and theoretical physicists.
This books aims at giving an overview over theoretical and phenomenological aspects of particle astrophysics and particle cosmology. To be of interest for both students and researchers in neighboring fields of physics, it keeps a balance between well established foundations that will not significantly change in the future and a more in-depth treatment of selected subfields in which significant new developments have been taking place recently. These include high energy particle astrophysics, such as cosmic high energy neutrinos, the interplay between detection techniques of dark matter in the laboratory and in high energy cosmic radiation, axion-like particles, and relics of the early Universe such as primordial magnetic fields and gravitational waves. It also contains exercises and thus will be suitable for both introductory and advanced courses in astroparticle physics.
This book gives a detailed, up-to-date account of the Lense-Thirring effect and its implications for physics and astrophysics. Starting from a profound intuition of Lense and Thirring in 1918, based on a simple solution to the linearized Einstein field equations, this has emerged in the past four decades as a phenomenon of extraordinary importance in cosmology, radio jets in quasars, and the physics of neutron stars and black holes, besides leading to some of the most sophisticated experiments ever performed in the space surrounding our planet. The book contains the contributions presented at the "Third William Fairbank Meeting," which have been expanded by adding a complete set of classical and prominent contemporary papers on this subject and a general introduction by R Ruffini.
This textbook is intended as an introduction to the physics of solar and stellar coronae, emphasizing kinetic plasma processes. It is addressed to observational astronomers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates without a ba- ground in plasma physics. Coronal physics is today a vast field with many different aims and goals. So- ing out the really important aspects of an observed phenomenon and using the physics best suited for the case is a formidable problem. There are already several excellent books, oriented toward the interests of astrophysicists, that deal with the magnetohydrodynamics of stellar atmospheres, radiation transport, and radiation theory. In kinetic processes, the different particle velocities play an important role. This is the case when particle collisions can be neglected, for example in very brief phenomena - such as one period of a high-frequency wave - or in effects produced by energetic particles with very long collision times. Some of the most persistent problems of solar physics, like coronal heating, shock waves, flare energy release, and particle acceleration, are likely to be at least partially related to such p- cesses. Study of the Sun is not regarded here as an end in itself, but as the source of information for more general stellar applications. Our understanding of stellar processes relies heavily, in turn, on our understanding of solar processes. Thus an introduction to what is happening in hot, dilute coronae necessarily starts with the plasma physics of our nearest star.
This thesis presents valuable contributions to several aspects of the rapidly growing field of gravitational wave astrophysics. The potential sources of gravitational waves in globular clusters are analyzed using sophisticated dynamics simulations involving intermediate mass black holes and including, for the first time, high-order post-Newtonian corrections to the equations of motion. The thesis further demonstrates our ability to accurately measure the parameters of the sources involved in intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects into hundred-solar-mass black holes. Lastly, it proposes new techniques for the computationally efficient inference on gravitational waves. On 14 September 2015, the LIGO observatory reported the first direct detection of gravitational waves from the merger of a pair of black holes. For a brief fraction of a second, the power emitted by this merger exceeded the combined output of all stars in the visible universe. This has since been followed by another confirmed detection and a third candidate binary black hole merger. These detections heralded the birth of an exciting new field: gravitational-wave astrophysics.
This book presents a review about the physics of clusters of galaxies beyond the standard thermal view. The book first gives a general introduction to clusters of galaxies. It discusses the properties of the hot, virialised gas in these clusters. But the main focus is upon what is beyond this thermal gas: the surrounding warm-hot intergalactic medium, non-thermal emission components and the chemical enrichment of the clusters and their environments. What is the evolution of the hot gas in clusters and the surrounding cosmic web? How does it reach equilibrium? What is the role of magnetic fields and shocks? Has the WHIM been detetected? Are there non-thermal components in clusters? How does the metallicity evolve? These questions and many others are addressed from three different points of view: observations, theory of the physical processes and numerical simulations. The book is written as a tutorial review. It is meant as an introduction for professionals and students wishing to work in this field. This means that no attempt is made to give a complete overview of all the work that has been done in this field, but to focus upon what needs to be known to be able to work in this field, and to explain to the reader basic processes, techniques and observations that experts often assume to be common knowledge.
Physicists are pondering on the possibility of simulating black holes in the laboratory by means of various "analog models". These analog models, typically based on condensed matter physics, can be used to help us understand general relativity (Einstein's gravity); conversely, abstract techniques developed in general relativity can sometimes be used to help us understand certain aspects of condensed matter physics. This book contains 13 chapters - written by experts in general relativity, particle physics, and condensed matter physics - that explore various aspects of this two-way traffic.
This book includes the proceedings of the Workshop held in Madrid, April 1999 to celebrate 2 years of successful operation of the first Spanish small scientific satellite in orbit. It contains discussions about the overall philosophy of small mission programs, the design of the satellite and its payload as well as the most relevant scientific outcome of the mission. Also included are additional contributions to the workshop, which are of importance to Minisat 01 in order to put its results within context. Finally, the future of small missions for space sciences is reviewed together with the main technological challenges for new studies. Out of the technological and scientific results of Minisat 01, the measurement of the EUV airglow spectrum and the flux of some stars in the same range can be highlighted together with the dismiss of the massive neutrino decay theory. The high-energy experiment analyzed the characterization of the radiation environment in LEO and the behaviour of different kind of detectors, as well as the use of coded masks for imaging and the measurement of some specific sources. The book's level is intended for specialists in EUV and Hard X-Ray astrophysicists as well as for engineers and technicians involved in space science experiments and missions.
This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fifth Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomfa, SEA). The meeting was held at the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha in Toledo, from September 9 to 13, 2002. The event brought together 219 participants who pre sented their latest results in many different subjects. In comparison with the previous scientific meetings of the Society, the numbers of oral talks and poster contributions (122 and 64, respectively) are rapidly increasing, confirming that the SEA conferences are becoming a point of reference to assess the interests and achievements of astrophysical research in Spain. During the meeting, the SEA made public the granting of the Prize to the Best Spanish Ph. D. Thesis in As tronomy and Astrophysics for the period 2000-2001 ex aequo to Dr. A. Zurita and Dr. E. Villaver. This is the second time that the SEA is awarding this prize, which aim is to encourage young spanish astrophysicists to pursue a high level scientific career. The Society is indebted to the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, and, in particular, to the San Pedro Martir staff, for its hospitality. It is also indebted to the Local Organizing Committee for its dedication and the good atmosphere that prevailed at any moment, and to the Scientific Organizing Committee for its excel lent work."
This volume contains the proceedings of the meeting entitled, "The IGM/Galaxy Connection: The Distribution of Baryons at z = 0. " The meeting was held August 8 -10 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) located in Boulder, Colorado on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains (see conference photo). We organized this meeting because we felt it was time to address the link between galaxies and the intergalactic medium at low redshift. In this vein, we posed several questions to the conference participants: Where are the baryons in the local universe and in what phase do they reside? What signatures of galaxy evolution have been imprinted on the IGM? What percentage of intergalactic gas is left from the galaxy formation process? What does the distribution of baryons at z = 0 tell us about the early universe? The conference was an overwhelming success with lots of friendly interaction and discussion among the participants. At lunch we were treated to splendid views from the NCAR terrace and discussions rang ing from the importance of the LSR, GSR, and LGSR velocity frames to how long the desserts would last with 90 astronomers and the hot Boul der sun. From an inventory of the baryons, to the associations between galaxies and Lya absorbers, to the mechanisms by which galaxies obtain and lose gas, the conference covered many topics. The results of these endeavors are contained in these pages and eloquently summarized by Chris Impey."
The aim of this book is to present the theory and applications of the relativistic Boltzmann equation in a self-contained manner, even for those readers who have no familiarity with special and general relativity. Though an attempt is made to present the basic concepts in a complete fashion, the style of presentation is chosen to be appealing to readers who want to understand how kinetic theory is used for explicit calculations. The book will be helpful not only as a textbook for an advanced course on relativistic kinetic theory but also as a reference for physicists, astrophysicists and applied mathematicians who are interested in the theory and applications of the relativistic Boltzmann equation.
The 16th conference of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR16), held at the International Convention Centre in Durban, South Africa, from 15 to 21 July, was attended by 450 delegates from around the world. The scientific programme comprised 18 plenary lectures, I public lecture and 19 workshops which, excepting 3 plenary lectures, are presented in this proceedings. It was the first major international conference on general relativity and gravitation held on the African continent.
This monograph presents a systematic treatment of the theory for hyperbolic conservation laws and their applications to vehicular traffics and crowd dynamics. In the first part of the book, the author presents very basic considerations and gradually introduces the mathematical tools necessary to describe and understand the mathematical models developed in the following parts focusing on vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The book is a self-contained valuable resource for advanced courses in mathematical modeling, physics and civil engineering. A number of examples and figures facilitate a better understanding of the underlying concepts and motivations for the students. Important new techniques are presented, in particular the wave front tracking algorithm, the operator splitting approach, the non-classical theory of conservation laws and the constrained problems. This book is the first to present a comprehensive account of these fundamental new mathematical advances.
The cryosphere encompasses all regions of the planet that experiences water in ice form for some portion of the year. In this book, authors Melody Sandells and Daniela Flocco deliver an introduction to the physics of the cryosphere.
The workshop "Nonhnear MHD Waves and Turbulence" was held at the - servatoire de Nice, December 1-4, 1998 and brought together an international group of experts in plasma physics, fluid dynamics and applied mathematics. The aim of the meeting was to survey the current knowledge on two main topics: (i) propagation of plasma waves (like Alfven, whistler or ion-acoustic waves), their instabilities and the development of a nonlinear dynamics lea ding to solitonic structures, wave collapse or weak turbulence; (ii) turbulence in magnetohydrodynamic flows and its reduced description in the presence of a strong ambient magnetic fleld. As is well known, both aspects play an important role in various geophysical or astrophysical media such as the - gnetospheres of planets, the heliosphere, the solar wind, the solar corona, the interplanetary and interstellar media, etc. This volume, which includes expanded versions of oral contributions pre sented at this meeting, should be of interest for a large community of resear chers in space plasmas and nonlinear sciences. Special effort was made to put the new results into perspective and to provide a detailed literature review. A main motivation was the attempt to relate more closely the theoretical un derstanding of MHD waves and turbulence (both weak and strong) with the most recent observations in space plasmas. Some papers also bring interesting new insights into the evolution of hydrodynamic or magnetohydrodynamic structures, based on systematic asymptotic methods."
Composed of a set of lectures and tutorial reviews, this book stems from a summer school devoted to the gravitational aspects of the sun and their geophysical consequences. Contribitions elaborate on the gravitational distortions of the sun which can be used to gain some knowledge of the sun's interior and surface phenomena but which also influences the sun's irradience and thus ultimately the earth's climate. Last but not least, it is shown that these small distortions constitute a formidable challenge to solar astrometry, and the final part of the book describes the observational difficulties in defining unequivocally the solar diameter.
This book covers the results obtained in the Tera op Workbench project during a four years period from 2004 to 2008. The Tera op Workbench project is a colla- ration betweenthe High PerformanceComputingCenter Stuttgart (HLRS) and NEC Deutschland GmbH (NEC-HPCE) to support users to achieve their research goals using high performance computing. The Tera op Workbench supports users of the HLRS systems to enable and - cilitate leading edge scienti c research. This is achieved by optimizing their codes and improving the process work ow which results from the integration of diff- ent modules into a "hybrid vector system". The assessment and demonstration of industrial relevance is another goal of the cooperation. The Tera op Workbench project consists of numerous individual codes, grouped together by application area and developed and maintained by researchers or c- mercial organizations. Within the project, several of the codes have shown the ab- ity to reach beyond the TFlop/s threshold of sustained performance. This created the possibility for new science and a deeper understanding of the underlying physics. The papers in this book demonstrate the value of the project for different scienti c areas.
This biography summarizes the seminal contributions to auroral and space science of Carl Stormer (1874 - 1957). He was the first to develop precise photographic methods to calculate heights and morphologies of diverse auroral forms during four solar cycles. Stormer independently devised numerical techniques to determine the trajectories of high-energy charged particles allowed and forbidden in the Earth's magnetic field. His theoretical analyses explained cosmic ray access to the upper atmosphere, 20 years before they were identified by other scientists. Stormer's crowning achievement, "The Polar Aurora," published when he was 81 years old, stands to this day as a regularly cited guide in graduate-level courses on space physics. The authors present the life of this prodigious scientist in relation to the cultural life of early 20th century in Norway and to the development of the space sciences in the post-Sputnik era.
The book deals with the development of continual models of turbulent natural media. Such models serve as a ground for the statement and numerical evaluation of the key problems of the structure and evolution of the numerous astrophysical and geophysical objects. The processes of ordering (self-organization) in an originally chaotic turbulent medium are addressed and treated in detail with the use of irreversible thermodynamics and stochastic dynamics approaches which underlie the respective models. Different examples of ordering set up in the natural environment and outer space are brought and thoroughly discussed, the main focus being given to the protoplanetary discs formation and evolution.
This book presents lecture materials from the Third LOFAR Data School, transformed into a coherent and complete reference book describing the LOFAR design, along with descriptions of primary science cases, data processing techniques, and recipes for data handling. Together with hands-on exercises the chapters, based on the lecture notes, teach fundamentals and practical knowledge. LOFAR is a new and innovative radio telescope operating at low radio frequencies (10-250 MHz) and is the first of a new generation of radio interferometers that are leading the way to the ambitious Square Kilometre Array (SKA) to be built in the next decade. This unique reference guide serves as a primary information source for research groups around the world that seek to make the most of LOFAR data, as well as those who will push these topics forward to the next level with the design, construction, and realization of the SKA. This book will also be useful as supplementary reading material for any astrophysics overview or astrophysical techniques course, particularly those geared towards radio astronomy (and radio astronomy techniques).
The Pacific Rim Conferences for the first decade from the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's were primary concerned with binary stars research. The Conference expanded to all areas of Stellar Astrophysics for the last two meetings in Hong Kong; at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1997 and at the Hong Kong University in 1999. At the conclusion of the very successful Pacific Rim Conference on Stellar Astrophysics held in Hong Kong University, members of the Sci entific Organizing Committee began planning for the next conference. We approached Professor Tan Lu of Nanjing University and Professor Tipei Li of the Institute of High Energy Physics about hosting a con ference in China. The city of Xi'an in Shaanxi province and a city in Yunnan province, were considered to be the most likely locations. It be came crucial to find the right person to serve as Chair (or Co-chairs) for the Local Organizing Committee. Initially, Professor Lu was the logical choice but he declined for personal reasons. Professor Li was invited to lead a new department of Astrophysics at Tsinghua University so he could not take on the additional load of chairing the LOC. Professor Gang Zhao of Beijing Astronomical Observatory was approached to take on the task but he also declined. This has been a busy time for Chinese astronomers. The SOC decided to have the conference dedicated to honor Dr. Helmut A."
This book ushers in a new era of experimental and theoretical investigations into collective processes, structure formation, and self-organization of nuclear matter. It reports the results of experiments wherein for the first time the nuclei constituting our world (those displayed in Mendeleev's table as well as the super-heavy ones) have been artificially created. Pioneering breakthroughs are described, achieved at the Proton-21 Laboratory, Kiev, Ukraine, in a variety of new physical and technological directions.A detailed description of the main experiments, their analyses, and the interpretation of copious experimental data are given, along with the methodology governing key measurements and the processing algorithms of the data that empirically confirm the occurrence of macroscopic self-organizing processes leading to the nuclear transformations of various materials.
This book collects extended and specialized reviews on topics linking astrophysics and particle physics at a level intermediate between a graduate student and a young researcher. The book includes also three reviews on observational techniques used in forefront astrophysics and short articles on research performed in Latin America. The reviews, updated and written by specialized researchers, describe the state of the art in the related research topics. This book is a valuable complement not only for research but also for lecturers in specialized course of high energy astrophysics, cosmic ray astrophysics and particle physics." |
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