Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics

Thomas K. Gaisser is Martin A. Pomerantz Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt prize. His research at the Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy includes cosmic ray physics, atmospheric neutrinos and neutrino astronomy. Ralph Engel is a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Physics and at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, where he specialises in the development of hadronic interaction models and their application to astrophysical questions. He is the author or co-author of a number of simulation codes commonly applied in cosmic ray physics, including DPMJET, CONEX, SOFIA and Sibyll. Elisa Resconi is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the Technische Universität München, where she focuses on the development of photosensors, the physics of neutrino oscillations and the search for neutrino point sources. She is a recipient of the Emmy-Noether grant and the Heisenberg professorship.

• Preface to the first edition; Preface to the second edition; 1. Cosmic rays; 2. Cosmic ray data; 3. Particle physics; 4. Hadronic interactions and accelerator data; 5. Cascade equations; 6. Atmospheric muons and neutrinos; 7. Neutrino masses and oscillations; 8. Muons and neutrinos underground; 9. Cosmic rays in the Galaxy; 10. Extragalactic propagation of cosmic rays; 11. Astrophysical - rays and neutrinos; 12. Acceleration; 13. Supernovae in the Milky Way; 14. Astrophysical accelerators and beam dumps; 15. Electromagnetic cascades; 16. Extensive air showers; 17. Very high energy cosmic rays; 18. Neutrino astronomy; A.1. Units, constants and definitions; A.2. References to flux measurements; A.3. Particle flux, density, and interaction cross section; A.4. Fundamentals of scattering theory; A.5. Regge amplitude; A.6. Glauber model of nuclear cross sections; A.7. Earth's atmosphere; A.8. Longitudinal development of air showers; A.9. Secondary positrons and electrons; A.10. Liouville's theorem and cosmic ray propagation; A.11. Cosmology and distances measures; A.12. The Hillas splitting algorithm; References; Index.

'With more than 25 years since the first edition, this second edition … has been revised and extended by about 150 pages to account for the progress and important discoveries made in the field since then. These comprise the famous neutrino oscillations, the cutoff in ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray spectra, Tera-electronvolt gamma rays from galactic sources and the unexpected excess of high-energy positrons and astrophysical neutrinos. … The text is well written and presents all material with mathematical rigour and a large number of references to scientific publications … The text is accompanied by numerous black-and-white figures, mainly of spectra. It has an appendix with additional material and a helpful index. … It can be recommended mainly for graduate students and researchers from both theory and experiment who want a thorough introduction to the phenomenology and to the theoretical background of cosmic ray physics at the junction of particle physics and astronomy.' Manuel Vogel, Contemporary Physics