Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

1.1 The dark and the light

1.2 Where the fires burn

1.3 The vast dark sea

1.4 The great beyond

1.5 The next steps

2 The nuts and bolts of the Universe

2.1 The building blocks: elementary particles

2.1.1 Atoms and quanta

2.1.2 Anti-matter, neutrinos and the particle explosion

2.1.3 Elementary, dear Watson

2.2 The forces: three easy pieces and a harder one

2.2.1 The electromagnetic force

2.2.2 The weak force

2.2.3 The strong force

2.2.4 The gravitational force

2.3 Beyond the Standard Model

2.4 Into the soup

3 Cosmology

3.1 The dynamics of the Universe

3.2 The primordial fireball: a particle cauldron

3.3 Into the unknown: the GUT and Planck eras

3.4 Inflation, dark energy and dark matter

4 Cosmic structure formation

4.1 The perturbed Universe

4.2 Large scale structure formation

4.3 Stars: the Universe’s worker bees

4.4 Stellar and galactic concentrates

4.5 Black hole characteristics

4.6 Black hole astrophysics

5 Active galaxies

5.1 What makes a galaxy “active”?

5.2 MBH masses, masers and distances

5.3 An AGN garden, classified

5.4 Extreme AGNs

6 Stellar cataclysms

6.1 Stellar high energy sources

6.2 White dwarfs and thermonuclear supernovae

6.2.1 White dwarf formation

6.2.2 White dwarf high energy sources

6.3 Core collapse supernovae

6.3.1 Core collapse and neutron stars

6.3.2 Core collapse and black holes

6.3.3 Diffuse supernova remnants

6.4 Neutron stars and pulsars

6.5 Accreting X-ray binaries

6.6 Millisecond pulsars

6.7 Magnetars

6.8 Stellar black holes

6.9 Micro-quasars: neutron stars or black holes?

7 Gamma-ray bursts

7.1 What are gamma-ray bursts?

7.2 Phenomenology of gamma-ray bursts

7.3 The GRB prompt radiation

7.4 GRB progenitors

7.4.1 Long gamma-ray bursts

7.4.2 Long gamma-ray bursts and supernovae

7.4.3 Short gamma-ray bursts

7.5 GRB afterglows

7.6 Cosmological uses of GRBs

7.7 Very high energy gamma-rays

7.8 Non-photonic emission

7.9 Wider impact of GRB multi-channel studies

8 GeV and TeV gamma-rays

8.1 Importance of the GeV–TeV range

8.2 Galactic Gev–TeV sources

8.3 Extragalactic sources

8.4 Detectability of GeV–TeV sources

8.5 GeV and TeV detection techniques

9 Gravitational waves

9.1 Ripples in space-time

9.2 Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves

9.3 Stellar binary GW sources

9.4 Galaxies as gravitational wave sources

9.5 Gravitational wave detectors

10 Cosmic rays

10.1 Particles from Heaven

10.2 Ultra-high energy cosmic rays

10.3 Cosmic-ray observational techniques

11 Neutrinos

11.1 The elusive neutrinos

11.2 Stellar and supernova neutrinos

11.3 Atmospheric neutrinos

11.4 VHE astrophysical neutrinos

11.5 Cosmogenic neutrinos

11.6 Neutrino detectors

12 Dark dreams, Higgs and beyond

12.1 Dark matter

12.2 Indirect astrophysical WIMP searches

12.3 Direct WIMP searches

12.4 Axions

12.5 Dark energy

12.6 Beyond the Standard Model at the LHC

12.7 Underground astrophysics and particle physics

Epilogue

References

Glossary

Index