High Energy Astrophysics

Thierry Courvoisier is professor for astronomy at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva and director of the ISDC, Data Centre for Astrophysics. He made pioneering contributions to the research on quasars and their accretion flows, most notably on 3C 273.Prof. Courvoisier is the President of the European Astronomical Society, President of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal “The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review”. He has been teaching courses on high-energy astrophysics at the University of Geneva since the the early 1990s.Thierry is a keen sailor and crossed the Atlantic twice on his boat Cérès.

• Part I Physical Processes.- 1 The framework.- 2 Radiation of an accelerated charge.- 3 Bremsstrahlung.- 4 Cyclotron line emission.- 5 Synchrotron emission.- 6 Compton processes.- 7 Comptonisation.- 8 Pair Processes.- 9 Particle acceleration.- 10 Accretion.- 11 Radiation inefficient accretion flows.- Part II Astrophysical Objects.- 12 Black holes and accretion efficiency.- 13 Neutron Stars.- 14 Pulsars.- 15 The Hulse–Taylor pulsar and gravitational radiation.- 16 X-ray binaries.- 17 X-ray binaries evolution.- 18 Relativistic jets.- 19 Gamma ray bursts.- 20 Active galactic nuclei.- 21 The diffuse X-ray background and other cosmic backgrounds.- Index.

From the reviews: "The aim of this new book is to present the objects revealed by high-energy astrophysical observation, to discuss the physical conditions met by these objects, and to explain the physical processes at work under these conditions. ... The text of the present work is intended for readers close to the end of a master's course or early in a PhD programme in physics or astronomy, but it may also be useful for specialists in astrophysics and astronomy as reference book." (Claudia-Veronika Meister, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1257, 2013)