This book presents the proceedings of the 2nd Karl Schwarzschild Meeting on Gravitational Physics, focused on the general theme of black holes, gravity and information.Specialists in the field of black hole physics and rising young researchers present the latest findings on the broad topic of black holes, gravity, and information, highlighting its applications to astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and strongly correlated systems.

The successes of the standard models of particle physics and cosmology are many, but have proven incapable of explaining all the phenomena that we observe. This book investigates the potentially important role of quantum physics, particularly quantum anomalies, in various aspects of modern cosmology, such as inflation, the dynamical generation of the visible and dark matter in the universe, and gravitational waves. By doing so, the authors demonstrate that exploring the links between cosmology and particle physics is key to helping solve the mysteries of our Universe.

When predictions of Einstein's theory of General Relativity are compared against observations of our Universe, a huge inconsistency is found. The most popular fix for this inconsistency is to "invent" around 94% of the content of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. The dark energy is some exotic substance responsible for the apparent observed acceleration of the Universe. Another fix is to modify the theory of gravity: it is entirely plausible that Einstein's theory of General Relativity breaks down on cosmological scales, just as Newton's theory of gravity breaks down in the extreme gravitational field of the Sun. There are many alternative theories of gravity, each with the aim of describing observations of our Universe where General Relativity fails. Whether it is dark energy or some modified theory of gravity, it is clear that there is some "dark sector" in the Universe. In this thesis the author constructs a unifying framework for understanding the observational impact of general classes of dark sector theories, by formulating equations of state for the dark sector perturbations.

This thesis explores the possibility of searching for new effects of dark matter that are linear in g, an approach that offers enormous advantages over conventional schemes, since the interaction constant g is very small, g<<1. Further, the thesis employs an investigation of linear effects to derive new limits on certain interactions of dark matter with ordinary matter that improve on previous limits by up to 15 orders of magnitude. The first-ever limits on several other interactions are also derived. Astrophysical observations indicate that there is five times more dark matter-an 'invisible' form of matter, the identity and properties of which still remain shrouded in mystery-in the Universe than the ordinary 'visible' matter that makes up stars, planets, dust and interstellar gases. Conventional schemes for the direct detection of dark matter involve processes (such as collisions with, absorption by or inter-conversion with ordinary matter) that are either quartic (g4) or quadratic (g2) in an underlying interaction constant g.

This thesis addresses two very different but equally important topics in the very broad fields of astrophysics and cosmology: (I) the generation of cosmological magnetic fields and (II) gravitational fragmentation of the Cosmic Web. All mathematical developments are completed by illuminating physical interpretations, and the thesis, which is guided by existing observations, is purely theoretical. In part I, the author further develops a magnetogenesis model proposed in the literature, providing an unprecedented level of physical understanding. He demonstrates that the physics of photoionisation is very likely to have premagnetised, at a relevant level, the entire Universe at the early epoch of the formation of the first luminous sources. In part II, the author adapts the tools of plasma spectral theory to the context of gravitational instability of the baryonic gas within the stratified structures of the Cosmic Web. He skillfully derives the wave equation governing the growth of perturbations and explores various equilibrium configurations, in planar and cylindrical geometries characteristic of cosmic walls and filaments, for isothermal and polytropic conditions, with or without an external gravitational background. Clearly structured and written in pedagogical style, this outstanding thesis puts the results into perspective and highlights the merits and limitations of the various approaches explored.

This Ph.D. thesis is a search for physics beyond the standard model (SM) of particle physics, which successfully describes the interactions and properties of all known elementary particles. However, no particle exists in the SM that can account for the dark matter, which makes up about one quarter of the energy-mass content of the universe. Understanding the nature of dark matter is one goal of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The extension of the SM with supersymmetry (SUSY) is considered a promising possibilities to explain dark matter. The nominated thesis describes a search for SUSY using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. It utilizes a final state consisting of a photon, a lepton, and a large momentum imbalance probing a class of SUSY models that has not yet been studied extensively. The thesis stands out not only due to its content that is explained with clarity but also because the author performed more or less all aspects of the thesis analysis by himself, from data skimming to limit calculations, which is extremely rare, especially nowadays in the large LHC collaborations.

This book consists of invited reviews written by world-renowned experts on the subject of the outskirts of galaxies, an upcoming field which has been understudied so far. These regions are faint and hard to observe, yet hide a tremendous amount of information on the origin and early evolution of galaxies. They thus allow astronomers to address some of the most topical problems, such as gaseous and satellite accretion, radial migration, and merging. The book is published in conjunction with the celebration of the end of the four-year DAGAL project, an EU-funded initial training network, and with a major international conference on the topic held in March 2016 in Toledo. It thus reflects not only the views of the experts, but also the scientific discussions and progress achieved during the project and the meeting. The reviews in the book describe the most modern observations of the outer regions of our own Galaxy, and of galaxies in the local and high-redshift Universe. They tackle disks, haloes, streams, and accretion as observed through deep imaging and spectroscopy, and guide the reader through the various formation and evolution scenarios for galaxies. The reviews focus on the major open questions in the field, and explore how they can be tackled in the future. This book provides a unique entry point into the field for graduate students and non-specialists, and serves as a reference work for researchers in this exciting new field.

This book provides an introduction to the physics of interstellar gas in the Galaxy. It deals with the diffuse interstellar medium which supplies a complex environment for exploring the neutral gas content of a galaxy like the Milky Way and the techniques necessary for studying this non-stellar component. After an initial exposition of the phases of the interstellar medium and the role of gas in a spiral galaxy, the authors discuss the transition from atomic to molecular gas. They then consider basic radiative transfer and molecular spectroscopy with particular emphasis on the molecules useful for studying low-density molecular gas. Observational techniques for investigating the gas and the dust component of the diffuse interstellar medium throughout the electromagnetic spectrum are explored emphasizing results from the recent Herschel and Planck missions. A brief exposition on dust in the diffuse interstellar medium is followed by a discussion of molecular clouds in general and high-latitude molecular clouds in particular. Ways of calibrating CO observations with the molecular hydrogen content of a cloud are examined along with the dark molecular gas controversy. High-latitude molecular clouds are considered in detail as vehicles for applying the techniques developed in the book. Given the transient nature of diffuse and translucent molecular clouds, the role of turbulence in the origin and dynamics of these objects is examined in some detail. The book is targeted at graduate students or postdocs who are entering the field of interstellar medium studies.

Topological surgery is a mathematical technique used for creating new manifolds out of known ones. In this book the authors observe that it also occurs in natural phenomena of all scales: 1-dimensional surgery happens during DNA recombination and when cosmic magnetic lines reconnect; 2-dimensional surgery happens during tornado formation and cell mitosis; and they conjecture that 3-dimensional surgery happens during the formation of black holes from cosmic strings, offering an explanation for the existence of a black hole's singularity. Inspired by such phenomena, the authors present a new topological model that extends the formal definition to a continuous process caused by local forces. Lastly, they describe an intrinsic connection between topological surgery and a chaotic dynamical system exhibiting a "hole drilling" behavior. The authors' model indicates where to look for the forces causing surgery and what deformations should be observed in the local submanifolds involved. These predictions are significant for the study of phenomena exhibiting surgery and they also open new research directions. This novel study enables readers to gain a better understanding of the topology and dynamics of various natural phenomena, as well as topological surgery itself and serves as a basis for many more insightful observations and new physical implications.

This comprehensive textbook is devoted to classical and quantum cosmology, with particular emphasis on modern approaches to quantum gravity and string theory and on their observational imprint. It covers major challenges in theoretical physics such as the big bang and the cosmological constant problem. An extensive review of standard cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, inflation and dark energy sets the scene for the phenomenological application of all the main quantum-gravity and string-theory models of cosmology. Born of the author's teaching experience and commitment to bridging the gap between cosmologists and theoreticians working beyond the established laws of particle physics and general relativity, this is a unique text where quantum-gravity approaches and string theory are treated on an equal footing. As well as introducing cosmology to undergraduate and graduate students with its pedagogical presentation and the help of 45 solved exercises, this book, which includes an ambitious bibliography of about 3500 items, will serve as a valuable reference for lecturers and researchers.

This thesis presents the first measurement of charmed D0 meson production relative to the reaction plane in Pb-Pb collisions at the center-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon collision of sNN = 2.76 TeV. It also showcases the measurement of the D0 production in p-Pb collisions at sNN = 5.02 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement of the D0 azimuthal anisotropy with respect to the reaction plane indicates that low- momentum charm quarks participate in the collective expansion of the high-density, strongly interacting medium formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, despite their large mass. This behavior can be explained by charm hadronization via recombination with light quarks from the medium and collisional energy loss. The measurement of the D0 production in p-Pb collisions is crucial to separate the effect induced by cold nuclear matter from the final- state effects induced by the hot medium formed in Pb-Pb collisions. The D0 production in p-Pb collisions is consistent with the binary collision scaling of the production in pp collisions, demonstrating that the modification of the momentum distribution observed in Pb-Pb collisions with respect to pp is predominantly induced by final-state effects such as the charm energy loss.

This is the second edition of a well-received book that is a modern, self-contained introduction to the theory of gravitational interactions. The new edition includes more details on gravitational waves of cosmological origin, the so-called brane world scenario, and gravitational time-delay effects.The first part of the book follows the traditional presentation of general relativity as a geometric theory of the macroscopic gravitational field, while the second, more advanced part discusses the deep analogies (and differences) between a geometric theory of gravity and the gauge theories of the other fundamental interactions. This fills a gap within the traditional approach to general relativity which usually leaves students puzzled about the role of gravity. The required notions of differential geometry are reduced to the minimum, allowing room for aspects of gravitational physics of current phenomenological and theoretical interest, such as the properties of gravitational waves, the gravitational interactions of spinors, and the supersymmetric and higher-dimensional generalization of the Einstein equations. This textbook is primarily intended for students pursuing a theoretical or astroparticle curriculum but is also relevant for PhD students and young researchers.

This book develops a general approach that can be systematically refined to investigate the statics and dynamics of deformable solid bodies. These methods are then employed to small bodies in the Solar System. With several space missions underway and more being planned, interest in our immediate neighbourhood is growing. In this spirit, this book investigates various phenomena encountered in planetary science, including disruptions during planetary fly-bys, equilibrium shapes and stability of small rubble bodies, and spin-driven shape changes. The flexible procedure proposed here will help readers gain valuable insights into the mechanics of solar system bodies, while at the same time complementing numerical investigations. The technique itself is built upon the virial method successfully employed by Chandrasekhar (1969) to study the equilibrium shapes of spinning fluid objects. However, here Chandrasekhar's approach is modified in order to study more complex dynamical situations and include objects of different rheologies, e.g., granular aggregates, or "rubble piles". The book is largely self-contained, though some basic familiarity with continuum mechanics will be beneficial.

This textbook presents the established sciences of optical, infrared, and radio astronomy as distinct research areas, focusing on the science targets and the constraints that they place on instrumentation in the different domains. It aims to bridge the gap between specialized books and practical texts, presenting the state of the art in different techniques. For each type of astronomy, the discussion proceeds from the orders of magnitude for observable quantities that drive the building of instrumentation and the development of advanced techniques. The specific telescopes and detectors are then presented, together with the techniques used to measure fluxes and spectra. Finally, the instruments and their limits are discussed to assist readers in choice of setup, planning and execution of observations, and data reduction. The volume also includes worked examples and problem sets to improve student understanding; tables and figures in chapters su mmarize the state of the art of instrumentation and techniques.

This thesis provides a detailed and comprehensive description of the search for New Physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the mono-jet final state, using the first 3.2 fb-1 of data collected at the centre of mass energy of colliding protons of 13~TeV recorded in the ATLAS experiment at LHC. The results are interpreted as limits in different theoretical contexts such as compressed supersymmetric models, theories that foresee extra-spatial dimensions and in the dark matter scenario. In the latter the limits are then compared with those obtained by other ATLAS analyses and by experiments based on completely different experimental techniques, highlighting the role of the mono-jet results in the context of dark matter searches.Lastly, a set of possible analysis improvements are proposed to reduce the main uncertainties that affect the signal region and to increase the discovery potential by further exploiting the information on the final state.

Following the approach of Lev Landau and Evgenii Lifshitz, this book introduces the theory of special and general relativity with the Lagrangian formalism and the principle of least action. This method allows the complete theory to be constructed starting from a small number of assumptions, and is the most natural approach in modern theoretical physics. The book begins by reviewing Newtonian mechanics and Newtonian gravity with the Lagrangian formalism and the principle of least action, and then moves to special and general relativity. Most calculations are presented step by step, as is done on the board in class. The book covers recent advances in gravitational wave astronomy and provides a general overview of current lines of research in gravity. It also includes numerous examples and problems in each chapter.

This book shows how our new-found ability to observe the Earth from "the necessary distance" has wide and profound cultural and ethical implications. First of all, it is the outcome of speculations and investigations of human beings in relation to their home planet carried out over millennia. In particular, it reveals a split between the ancient idea of the Earth as nurturing mother and the more recent conception of the Earth as a neutral resource able to be infinitely exploited by humankind. The 1968 Earthrise photograph, showing the beauty and fragility of the Earth, helped spark a worldwide environmental movement; now the comprehensive coverage of global change provided by satellites has the potential to convince us beyond reasonable doubt of the huge alterations being wrought upon the Earth and its climate system as a result of human actions, and of the need to act more responsibly.

This book takes a pedagogical approach to explaining quantum gravity, supersymmetry and string theory in a coherent way. It is aimed at graduate students and researchers in quantum field theory and high-energy physics. The first part of the book introduces quantum gravity, without requiring previous knowledge of general relativity (GR). The necessary geometrical aspects are derived afresh leading to explicit general Lagrangians for gravity, including that of general relativity. The quantum aspect of gravitation, as described by the graviton, is introduced and perturbative quantum GR is discussed. The Schwinger-DeWitt formalism is developed to compute the one-loop contribution to the theory and renormalizability aspects of the perturbative theory are also discussed. This follows by introducing only the very basics of a non-perturbative, background-independent, formulation of quantum gravity, referred to as "loop quantum gravity", which gives rise to a quantization of space. In the second part the author introduces supersymmetry and its consequences. The generation of superfields is represented in detail. Supersymmetric generalizations of Maxwell's Theory as well as of Yang-Mills field theory, and of the standard model are worked out. Spontaneous symmetry breaking, improvement of the divergence problem in supersymmetric field theory, and its role in the hierarchy problem are covered. The unification of the fundamental constants in a supersymmetric version of the standard model are then studied. Geometrical aspects necessary to study supergravity are developed culminating in the derivation of its full action. The third part introduces string theory and the analysis of the spectra of the mass (squared) operator associated with the oscillating strings. The properties of the underlying fields, associated with massless particles, encountered in string theory are studied in some detail. Elements of compactification, duality and D-branes are given, as well of the generation of vertices and interactions of strings. In the final sections, the author shows how to recover GR and the Yang-Mills field Theory from string theory.

This book explores a wide range of topics relating to scientific and religious learning in the work of Bishop Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253) and does so from various perspectives, including those of a twenty-first century scientists, historians, and philosophers as well as several medievalists. In particular, it aims to contribute to our understanding of where to place Grosseteste in the history of science (against the background of the famous claim by A.C. Crombie that Grosseteste introduced what we now might call "experimental science") and to demonstrate that the polymathic world of the medieval scholar, who recognized no dichotomy in the pursuit of scientific and philosophical/theological understanding, has much to teach those of us in the modern world who wrestle with the vexed question of the relationship between science and religion. The book comprises an edited selection of the best papers presented at the 3rd International Robert Grosseteste Conference (2014) on the theme of scientific and religious learning, especially in the work of Grosseteste.

This thesis offers an excellent, comprehensive introduction to the physics of the quark-gluon plasma. It clearly explains the connection between theory and experiment, making the topic accessible to non-specialists in this field. The experimental work, which contributes significantly to our understanding of the quark-gluon plasma, is described in great detail. The results described in the final chapters of the thesis provide interesting new ideas about the connection between proton-proton and Pb-Pb collisions. Simone Schuchmann received the 'ALICE Thesis Award 2016' for this excellent work.

This thesis describes the search for Dark Matter at the LHC in the mono-jet plus missing transverse momentum final state, using the full dataset recorded in 2012 by the ATLAS Experiment. It is the first time that the number of jets is not explicitly restricted to one or two, thus increasing the sensitivity to new signals. Instead, a balance between the most energetic jet and the missing transverse momentum is required, thus selecting mono-jet-like final states. Collider searches for Dark Matter have typically used signal models employing effective field theories (EFTs), even when comparing to results from direct and indirect detection experiments, where the difference in energy scale renders many such comparisons invalid. The thesis features the first robust and comprehensive treatment of the validity of EFTs in collider searches, and provides a means by which the different classifications of Dark Matter experiments can be compared on a sound and fair basis.

This book provides a compilation of in-depth articles and reviews on key topics within gravitation, cosmology and related issues. It is a celebratory volume dedicated to Prof. Thanu Padmanabhan ("Paddy"), the renowned relativist and cosmologist from IUCAA, India, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The authors, many of them leaders of their fields, are all colleagues, collaborators and former students of Paddy, who have worked with him over a research career spanning more than four decades. Paddy is a scientist of diverse interests, who attaches great importance to teaching. With this in mind, the aim of this compilation is to provide an accessible pedagogic introduction to, and overview of, various important topics in cosmology, gravitation and astrophysics. As such it will be an invaluable resource for scientists, graduate students and also advanced undergraduates seeking to broaden their horizons.

This thesis introduces a new theoretical tool to explore the notion of time and temporal order in quantum mechanics: the relativistic quantum "clock" framework. It proposes novel thought experiments showing that proper time can display quantum features, e.g. when a "clock" runs different proper times in superposition. The resulting new physical effects can be tested in near-future laboratory experiments (with atoms, molecules and photons as "clocks"). The notion of time holds the key to the regime where quantum theory and general relativity overlap, which has not been directly tested yet and remains largely unexplored by the theory. The framework also applies to scenarios in which causal relations between events become non-classical and which were previously considered impossible to address without refuting quantum theory. The relativistic quantum "clock" framework offers new insights into the foundations of quantum theory and general relativity.

This thesis studies various aspects of non-critical strings both as an example of a non-trivial and solvable model of quantum gravity and as a consistent approximation to the confining flux tube in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It proposes and develops a new technique for calculating the finite volume spectrum of confining flux tubes. This technique is based on approximate integrability and it played a game-changing role in the study of confining strings. Previously, a theoretical interpretation of available high quality lattice data was impossible, because the conventional perturbative expansion for calculating the string spectra was badly asymptotically diverging in the regime accessible on the lattice. With the new approach, energy levels can be calculated for much shorter flux tubes than was previously possible, allowing for a quantitative comparison with existing lattice data. The improved theoretical control makes it manifest that existing lattice data provides strong evidence for a new pseudoscalar particle localized on the QCD fluxtube - the worldsheet axion. The new technique paves a novel and promising path towards understanding the dynamics of quark confinement.

The book presents pedagogical reviews of important topics on high energy physics to the students and researchers in particle physics. The book also discusses topics on the Quark-Gluon plasma, thermal field theory, perturbative quantum chromodynamics, anomalies and cosmology. Students of particle physics need to be well-equipped with basic understanding of many concepts underlying the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. This is particularly true today when experimental results from colliders, such as large hadron collider (LHC) and relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC), as well as inferences from cosmological observations, are expected to further expand our understanding of particle physics at high energies. This volume is the second in the Surveys in Theoretical High Energy Physics Series (SThEP). Topics covered in this book are based on lectures delivered at the SERC Schools in Theoretical High Energy Physics at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, and the University of Hyderabad.