The High Energy Universe At Sharp Focus

The High Energy Universe at Sharp Focus

Energy Budget in the High Energy Universe

The existence of materials with very high specific energies greatly exceeding the local virial temperature is best represented by cosmic rays, whose origin has long been a mystery. Recent astrophysical observations in X-ray, gamma-ray, neutrino, and high energy cosmic ray experiments, in conjunction with theoretical studies, have revealed various new aspects of the high energy universe, including promising candidates for cosmic ray acceleration sites. As each approach has its own advantages and limitations, it is expected that joint efforts by experimentalists and theorists in various related fields are essential.The contributions in this volume include observation of the universe through a wide range of techniques for detecting cosmic rays, neutrinos, X-rays and gamma-rays, as well as theoretical considerations in understanding their nature and astrophysical aspects.

Lighthouses of the Universe: The Most Luminous Celestial Objects and Their Use for Cosmology

The book reviews the present status of understanding the nature of the most luminous objects in the Universe, connected with supermassive black holes and supermassive stars, clusters of galaxies and ultraluminous galaxies, sources of gamma-ray bursts and relativistic jets. Leading experts give overviews of essential physical mechanisms involved, discuss formation and evolution of these objects as well as prospects for their use in cosmology, as probes of the intergalactic medium at high redshifts and as a tool to study the end of dark ages. The theoretical models are complemented by new exciting results from orbital and ground-based observatories such as Chandra, XMM-Newton, HST, SDSS, VLT, Keck, and many others.