Relativistic Astrophysics And Cosmology

Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology offers a succinct and self-contained treatment of general relativity and its application to compact objects, gravitational waves and cosmology. The required mathematical concepts are introduced informally, following geometrical intuition as much as possible. The approach is theoretical, but there is ample discussion of observational aspects and of instrumental issues where appropriate. The book includes such topical issues as the Gravity Probe B mission, interferometer detectors of gravitational waves, and the physics behind the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Written for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in (astro)physics, it is ideally suited for a lecture course and contains 140 exercises with extensive hints. The reader is assumed to be familiar with linear algebra and analysis, ordinary differential equations, special relativity, and basic thermal physics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th Course of the International School of Cosmic Ray Astrophysics. It focuses on major areas of astrophysics, their relation to cosmic ray physics, and our current understanding of the energetic processes in the Galaxy and the Universe that govern the acceleration and form the features of the cosmic rays that we detect at Earth.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: ? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)? CC Proceedings ? Engineering & Physical Sciences

The 1972 Banff lectures attempted a systematic exposition of the ideas underlying recent developments in general relativity and its astronomical applications at a level accessible and useful to graduate students having some previous acquaintance with the subject. To our regret, it was not possible to include any printed record of Peebles' beautiful lectures on observational cosmology or of the many stimulating seminars on special topics contributed by the participants. What remains is nevertheless a reason ably self-contained and compact introduction to Einstein's theory in its modern in carnation, and we hope it will be found useful by the many physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians who wish to update and deepen their understanding of the theory. On behalf of the organizing committee, I should like to express appreciation to a number of people whose help was crucial to the success of the enterprise: to Jan van Kranendonk, who initiated the idea of a Banff summer school on general relativity; to him and to David Rowe and Don Betts for inspiration and moral support; to our indefatigable secretaries Olwyn Buckland and Leslie Hughes; and to Garry Nash, Richard Sigal, Tim Spanos, and Gordon Wilson who helped in a variety of ways to keep the wheels running. How much we owe to the splendid cooperative effort of the lecturers will be clear to any reader of the following pages.

Though the kinematics of the evolving universe became known decades ago, research into the physics of processes occurring in the expanding universe received a reliable observational and theoretical basis only in more recent years. These achievements have led in turn to the emergence of new problems, on which an unusually active assault has begun. This second volume of Relativistic Astrophysics provides a remarkably complete picture of the present state of cosmology. It is a synthesis of the theoretical foundations of contemporary cosmology, which are derived from work in relativity, plasma theory, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and particle physics. It presents the theoretical work that explains, describes, and predicts the nature of the universe, the physical process that occur in it, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of the light elements, and the cosmological singularity and the theory of gravitation. This book, long and eagerly awaited, is essential for everyone whose work is related to cosmology and astrophysics.

In this book, the interesting results of similar works carried out by both authors independently, is presented in a unique manner. This book is written as a token of exchange between the East and the West and it is hoped that it will lead to greater cooperation between the scientists.

For about half a century the general theory of relativity attracted little attention from physicists. However, the discovery of compact objects such as quasars and pulsars, as well as candidates for black holes on the one hand, and the microwave background radiation on the other hand completely changed the picture. In addition, developments in elementary particle physics, such as predictions of the behavior of matter at the ultrahigh energies that might have prevailed in the early stages of the big bang, have greatly en hanced the interest in general relativity. These developments created a large body of readers interested in general relativity, and its applications in astrophysics and cosmology. Having neither the time nor the inclination to delve deeply into the technical literature, such readers need a general introduction to the subject before exploring applica tions. It is for these readers that the present volume is intended. Keeping in mind the broad range of interests and wanting to avoid mathematical compli cations as much as possible, we have ventured to combine all three topics relativity, astrophysics, and cosmology-in a single volume. Naturally, we had to make a careful selection of topics to be discussed in order to keep the book to a manageable length.

This book deals mainly with gravitational physics and its application to the very early universe and models for relativistic objects. It reviews our present knowledge about the origin and formation of large-scale structure, quantum cosmology and some problems of observational cosmology. Experimental tests of general relativity, gravitational wave astrophysics and string theory complete the lists of themes in this volume which contains invited and contributed papers.

Since 1963, the Texas Symposia have been a biennial, peripatetic forum for forefront developments on a wide range of topics in relativistic astrophysics, from pulsars to string theory, from the birth of the universe to the death of stars. The 26 plenary lectures, 230 parallel session talks and 265 poster presentations attest to the scientific vitality of this interdisciplinary field.