This volume contains notes based on the lectures delivered at the fourth New Zealand Symposium in Laser Physics, held at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, February 10-15, 1986. At this meeting, about 80 physicists work ing in many parts of the world met to discuss topics of current interest in contemporary laser physics and quantum optics. These symposia, which have been held triennially since 1977, have evolved into an important meet ing ground for experimentalists and theoreticians working in a very rapidly developing field. As the format has evolved, the number of participants, in cluding the number from overseas, has grown steadily, and this year a poster session was included for the first time, enabling a far greater range of topics to be discussed than was possible in the limited lecture time available. At this meeting the major interest of the participants concerned the the oretical investigation of squeezed states of the radiation field and the very recently reported experimental observations of such states. Other related ar eas of work reported here include bistability and chaotic behaviour of optical systems, the quantum theory of measurements, optical tests of general rel ativity, and the current technological limitations governing the stabilization of lasers. The editors would like to thank the participants for providing detailed notes for publication shortly after the meeting, and the various organisa tions that have provided financial support."

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 book contains the expanded lecture notes of the 32nd Saas-Fee Advanced Course. The three contributions present the central themes in modern research on the cold universe, ranging from cold objects at large distances to the physics of dust in cold clouds.

The aim of this book is to give graduate students an overview of quantum gravity but it also covers related topics from astrophysics. Some well-written contributions can serve as an introduction into basic conceptual concepts like time in quantum gravity or the emergence of a classical world from quantum cosmology. This makes the volume attractive to philosophers of science, too. Other topics are black holes, gravitational waves and non-commutative extensions of physical theories.

Since the dawn of mankind, observers of the sky have wondered at the sudden appearance of new stars on the seemingly unchanging heavens and, for at least 2000 years, have recorded these phenomena in their annals and archives. Even in more modern times, since the discovery of SN1885A in S Andromeda which ?gured in the important "island universe" discussions of the 1920's, the puzzle of supernovae (SNe) has played an important role in astrophysics. Only with the seminal work of Fritz Zwicky and Walter Baade in the 1930's did we begin to understand the di?erences between novae and SNe and the importance of SNe as the fonts of energy for the interstellar medium and as drivers of chemical evolution in galaxies. As recently as the 1940's and 1950's the early days of radio astronomy were heavily in?uenced by the familiar names of Cassiopeia A and Taurus A, two young supernova remnants, and two Nobel prizes have been awarded for discovery and study of a related phenomenon, pulsars. In spite of the great age of the study of SNe, since at least the Chinese records of SN185and probably earlier, the ?eld is, in fact, very young having only attracted a large devoted following since the spectacular Type II SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the ?rst naked-eye SN in more than 400 years.

Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations. There is some grain of truth in this claim, but this grain depends very much on what one takes observation to be. In the philosophy of science of our century, observation has been practically equated with sense perception. This is understandable if we think of the attitude of radical empiricism that inspired Ernst Mach and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who powerfully influenced our century's philosophy of science. However, this was not the atti tude of the f ounders of modern science: Galileo, f or example, expressed in a f amous passage of the Assayer the conviction that perceptual features of the world are merely subjective, and are produced in the 'anima!' by the motion and impacts of unobservable particles that are endowed uniquely with mathematically expressible properties, and which are therefore the real features of the world. Moreover, on other occasions, when defending the Copernican theory, he explicitly remarked that in admitting that the Sun is static and the Earth turns on its own axis, 'reason must do violence to the sense' , and that it is thanks to this violence that one can know the tme constitution of the universe.

This book serves two purposes. The authors present important aspects of modern research on the mathematical structure of Einstein's field equations and they show how to extract their physical content from them by mathematically exact methods. The essays are devoted to exact solutions and to the Cauchy problem of the field equations as well as to post-Newtonian approximations that have direct physical implications. Further topics concern quantum gravity and optics in gravitational fields.
The book addresses researchers in relativity and differential geometry but can also be used as additional reading material for graduate students.

A small country builds a world-class telescope in its backyard and lives happily ever after (or at least for a quarter century). That in a nutshell is the story told in this collection of essays. The country of course is the Netherlands, and the telescope is the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Tele scope (WSRT), brainchild of Jan Oort. Living happily in this context is a continuing record of discovery and as such also a continuing basis for se curing observing time on facilities in other countries and operating at other frequencies. As our community celebrates the Silver Anniversary of the radio tele scope at Westerbork, it is fitting that we pause to take account of the scientific discoveries and insights it made possible. Initially the instrument represented the very significant step away from university-run, specialist facilities to a well-supported, common-user radio imager also having spec tral and polarization capabilities. It pioneered the mode of operation now common for satellite observatories, in which data is taken and calibrated by technicians and provided to researchers ready for analysis. It has been a major source of discovery in, among other areas, research on neutral hy drogen and studies of dark matter in galaxies.

This book is written in a pedagogical style intelligible for graduate students. It reviews recent progress in black-hole and wormhole theory and in mathematical cosmology within the framework of Einstein's field equations and beyond, including quantum effects. This collection of essays, written by leading scientists of long standing reputation, should become an indispensable source for future research.

In July 2006, a major international conference was held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada, to celebrate the career and work of a remarkable man of letters. Abner Shimony, who is well known for his pioneering contributions to foundations of quantum mechanics, is a physicist as well as a philosopher, and is highly respected among the intellectuals of both communities. In line with Shimony's conviction that philosophical investigation is not to be divorced from theoretical and empirical work in the sciences, the conference brought together leading theoretical physicists, experimentalists, as well as philosophers. This book collects twenty-three original essays stemming from the conference, on topics including history and methodology of science, Bell's theorem, probability theory, the uncertainty principle, stochastic modifications of quantum mechanics, and relativity theory. It ends with a transcript of a fascinating discussion between Lee Smolin and Shimony, ranging over the entire spectrum of Shimony's wide-ranging contributions to philosophy, science, and philosophy of science.

Galaxies have a history. This has become clear from recent sky surveys which have shown that distant galaxies, formed early in the life of the Universe, differ from the nearby ones. New observational windows at ultraviolet, infrared and millimetric wavelengths (provided by ROSAT, IRAM, IUE, IRAS, ISO) have revealed that galaxies contain a wealth of components: very hot gas, atomic hydrogen, molecules, dust, dark matter ...

A significant advance is expected due to new instruments (VLT, FIRST, XMM) which will allow one to explore the most distant Universe. Three Euroconferences have been planned to punctuate this new epoch in galactic research, bringing together specialists in various fields of Astronomy.

The first one, held in Granada (Spain) in May 2000, addressed the observational clues. The second one took place in October 2001 in St Denis de la Reunion (France) and reviewed the basic building blocks and small-scale processes in galaxy evolution. The third one will take place in July 2002 in Kiel (Germany) and will be devoted to the overall modelling of galaxy evolution. This book contains the proceedings of the second conference. It is suitable for researchers and PhD students in Astrophysics. "

Held December 16-919, 1999, this proceedings is derived from the Global Foundation Inc.'s Orbis Scientiae 1999. Topics include: cosmological parameters, unifying elementary particle physics, cosmology, superstrings, and black holes.

The foundations are thoroughly developed together with the required mathematical background from differential geometry developed in Part III.

The author also discusses the tests of general relativity in detail, including binary pulsars, with much space is devoted to the study of compact objects, especially to neutron stars and to the basic laws of black-hole physics.

This well-structured text and reference enables readers to easily navigate through the various sections as best matches their backgrounds and perspectives, whether mathematical, physical or astronomical.

Very applications oriented, the text includes very recent results, such as the supermassive black-hole in our galaxy and first double pulsar system

It was with pleasure that CAUP became for three days the core to the cloud of star formation experts all over the world. Close to the celebration of its 15th anniversary - therefore still in the early stages of institutional evolution - we are proud of our multiple activities in Astronomy: a productive research centre, classi?ed as "Institution of excellence" within the Portuguese research units, but also an "Institution of Public Utility" as recognised by the Government. Fifteen years ago we choose to play a role not only in research, as expected from any research centre but also in the training of the future astronomers and the promotion of science and scienti?c culture. This choice is clearly stated in our by-laws and also in the multiple activities we have carried out since. Along the years we have organized on a regular basis international Workshops similar to "Cores to Clusters." Sometimes we have chosen to organize int- national conferences of a larger size. On other occasions the choice has been for smaller and more informal discussion meetings. Or even doctoral schools with very different objectives. In common all those meetings have always had, besides the formal registered participants, a group of informal participants, our undergraduate students of Astronomy, so eager to be in touch with the real world.

Galaxies have a history. This has become clear from recent sky surveys, which have shown that distant galaxies, formed early in the life of the Universe, differ from the nearby ones. New observational windows at ultraviolet, infrared and millimetric wavelengths (provided by ROSAT, IRAM, IUE, IRAS, ISO) have revealed that galaxies contain a wealth of components: very hot gas, atomic hydrogen, molecules, dust, dark matter. A significant advance is expected due to new instruments (VLT, FIRST, XMM) which will allow one to explore the most distant Universe. Three Euroconferences have been planned to punctuate this new epoch in galactic research, bringing together specialists in various fields of Astronomy. The first, held in Granada (Spain) in May 2000, addressed the observational clues. The second will take place in October 2001 in St Denis de la Reunion (France) and will review the basic building blocks and small-scale processes in galaxy evolution. The third will take place in July 2002 in Kiel (Germany) and will be devoted to the overall modelling of galaxy evolution. This book contains the proceedings of the first conference. It is recommended to researchers and PhD students in Astrophysics."

This is the first volume in a series of books on the general theme of Supersymmetric Mechanics; the series is based on lectures and discussions held in 2005 and 2006 at the INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati. The selected topics include supersymmetry and supergravity, the attractor mechanism, black holes, fluxes, noncommutative mechanics, super-Hamiltonian formalism and matrix models. Incorporates in extensive write-ups the results of animated discussion sessions which followed the individual lectures.

Here is a systematic approach to such fundamental questions as: What mathematical structures does Einstein-Weyl causality impose on a point-set that has no other previous structure defined on it? The author proposes an axiomatization of the physics inspired notion of Einstein-Weyl causality and investigating the consequences in terms of possible topological spaces. One significant result is that the notion of causality can effectively be extended to discontinuum.

The formation of galaxies is one of the greatest puzzles in astronomy, the solution is shrouded in the depths of space and time, but has profound implications for the universe we observe today. This book discusses the beginnings of the process from cosmological observations and calculations. It examines the different theories of galaxy formation and shows where each theory either succeeds or fails in explaining what we actually observe. In addition, the book looks ahead to what we may expect to uncover about the epoch of galaxy formation from the new and upcoming generations of telescopes and technology.

The tremendous progress in astronomical observations over the past sixty years has revealed a vast structured universe whose fundamental parti cles are galaxies, and clusters thereof. The interpretation of the new astronomical evidence owes much to Einstein's insights and deductions. All our knowledge of the world derives from the light, more generally the energy, which reaches us from near and far. Einstein recognised the vital role of energy as the solE basis of our information about the workings of nature; his Special Theory of Relativity showed how our understanding of space and time Is linked with measurements involving reflecting light signals. He further demonstrated that matter exists in two interchangeable forms - a mass form and an energy form - which interact closely at all levels. His General Theory of Relativity dealt with the nature of this interaction in the context of gravitational fields, and led to a view of the universe which was soon observationally confirmed. Einstein's methods and results form the theoretical basis of modern cosmology which has spawned many 'models' of the universe; how ever, they all deal with an Einstein-type universe and they all employ his geometric approach to describe it."

Recently, analogies between laboratory physics (e.g. quantum optics and condensed matter) and gravitational/cosmological phenomena such as black holes have attracted an increasing interest. This book contains a series of selected lectures devoted to this new and rapidly developing field. Various analogies connecting (apparently) different areas in physics are presented in order to bridge the gap between them and to provide an alternative point of view.

The main goal of this work is to revisit the proof of the global stability of Minkowski space by D. Christodoulou and S. Klainerman, [Ch-KI]. We provide a new self-contained proof of the main part of that result, which concerns the full solution of the radiation problem in vacuum, for arbitrary asymptotically flat initial data sets. This can also be interpreted as a proof of the global stability of the external region of Schwarzschild spacetime. The proof, which is a significant modification of the arguments in [Ch-Kl], is based on a double null foliation of spacetime instead of the mixed null-maximal foliation used in [Ch-Kl]. This approach is more naturally adapted to the radiation features of the Einstein equations and leads to important technical simplifications. In the first chapter we review some basic notions of differential geometry that are sys tematically used in all the remaining chapters. We then introduce the Einstein equations and the initial data sets and discuss some of the basic features of the initial value problem in general relativity. We shall review, without proofs, well-established results concerning local and global existence and uniqueness and formulate our main result. The second chapter provides the technical motivation for the proof of our main theorem.

All physicists would agree that one of the most fundamental problems of the 21st century physics is the dimensionality of the world. In the four-dimensional world of Minkowski (or Minkowski spacetime) the most challenging problem is the nature of the temporal dimension. In Minkowski spacetime it is merely one of the four dimensions, which means that it is entirely given like the other three spacial dimensions. If the temporal dimension were not given in its entirety and only one constantly changing moment of it existed, Minkowski spacetime would be reduced to the ordinary three-dimensional space.

But if the physical world, represented by Minkowski spacetime, is indeed four-dimensional with time being the fourth dimension, then such a world is drastically different from its image based on our perceptions. Minkowski four-dimensional world is a block Universe, a frozen world in which nothing happens since all moments of time are given at once', which means that physical bodies are four-dimensional worldtubes containing the whole histories in time of the three-dimensional bodies of our everyday experience. The implications of a real Minkowski world for physics itself and especially for our world view are enormous.

The main focus of this volume is the question: is spacetime nothing more than a mathematical space (which describes the evolution in time of the ordinary three-dimensional world) or is it a mathematical model of a real four-dimensional world with time entirely given as the fourth dimension? It contains fourteen invited papers which either directly address the main question of the nature of spacetime or explore issues related to it."

The observation, in 1919 by A.S. Eddington and collaborators, of the gra- tational de?ection of light by the Sun proved one of the many predictions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: The Sun was the ?rst example of a gravitational lens. In 1936, Albert Einstein published an article in which he suggested - ing stars as gravitational lenses. A year later, Fritz Zwicky pointed out that galaxies would act as lenses much more likely than stars, and also gave a list of possible applications, as a means to determine the dark matter content of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. It was only in 1979 that the ?rst example of an extragalactic gravitational lens was provided by the observation of the distant quasar QSO 0957+0561, by D. Walsh, R.F. Carswell, and R.J. Weymann. A few years later, the ?rst lens showing images in the form of arcs was detected. The theory, observations, and applications of gravitational lensing cons- tute one of the most rapidly growing branches of astrophysics. The gravi- tional de?ection of light generated by mass concentrations along a light path producesmagni?cation,multiplicity,anddistortionofimages,anddelaysp- ton propagation from one line of sight relative to another. The huge amount of scienti?c work produced over the last decade on gravitational lensing has clearly revealed its already substantial and wide impact, and its potential for future astrophysical applications.

The 1980's have been times of great excitement in Astrophysics and Cosmology. Professors Dennis Sciama and Fabio Mardirossian and all the other Members of the Organizing Committees are to be congratulated for having given us a taste of this excitement in Trieste, by inviting the leaders of the subject to the meeting they have organized. The excitement has corne from the new observations of the three-dimensional structure of the universe through a large number of new measurements of redshifts. These have revealed that clusters of galaxies are distributed on the surface of big empty bubbles of diameters of the order of 20-50 Mpc. Additionally, there is some evidence for invisible dark matter (whose composition is not known) as well as evidence for the gravitational lens effect. To cap this has corne the supernova of 1987, an event which last occurred 383 years ago. For the first time in history, the neutrino flux from the supernova was measured, giving limits to neutrino masses and numbers of neutrino types. (The dark matter problem is related to Particle Physics - beyond this standard model). It is good to be alive when all this happens and to try to comprehend this. Once again, our appreciation to the organisers and to those who presented their beautiful results.

This volwne is the proceedings of the third school in particle astrophysics that Schramm and Galeotti have organized at Erice. The focus of thirs third school was the Generation of Cosmological Large-Scale Structure. It was held in November of 1996. The fIrst school in the series was on "Gauge Theory and the Early Universe" in May 1986, the second was on "Dark Matter in the Universe" in May 1988. All three schools have been successful under the auspices of the NATO Advanced Study Institute. This volume is thus the third in the series of the proceedings of these schools. The choice of the topic for this third school was natural, since the problem of generating a large-scale structure has become the most pressing problem in cosmology today. In particular, it is this generation of structure that is the interface between astronomical observations and particle models for the early universe. To date, all models for generating structures inevitably require new fundamental physics beyond the standard, SU x SU X U , model of high energy physics. The 3 2 I seeds for generating structures usually invoke unifIcation physics, and the matter needed to clump and form them seems to require particle properties that have not been seen in laboratories to date.