Customer Reviews

High Energy Astrophysics: Volume 1, Particles, Photons and their Detection

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The two volumes of "High Energy Astrophysics" by M.S. Longair are amongst my favourite books: I read them several times and every time I found interesting hints for my work. I'm waiting for the third volume for 3 years, but it's still missing from the bookshelf...
The first volume ("Particles, Photons and Their Detection") focuses on the interactions between high energy particles and matter, in order to help the reader to understand how detectors work. The theoretical approach is deep enough not to hide the "dirty" steps of the calculations, and some subsection requires good mathematical skills (well, not as much as for Russian books ;-).
The second volume ("Stars, the Galaxy and Interstellar Medium") focuses on the Physics of cosmic rays (CR) while they run through the Galaxy. The author takes the occasion to explain several very exciting items, from the proposed mechanisms of CR acceleration and high energy photons emission, to the diffusion through the interstellar medium and the Solar wind, untill the CR reach the Earth. Special emphasis is given to open problems -- only very few of them were solved in the meantime (Nov. 2001).
The 2 volumes are well suited for advanced students in Physics or Astronomy, and are a good reference for researchers.