Astrophysics for Physicists

Описание

xiv Preface
not have much background of physics or mathematics beyond what is taught at
the high school level. Then there are well-known specialized textbooks dealing
with important sub-areas of astrophysics (such as stars, galaxies, interstellar
matter or cosmology). However, there have been few attempts at bridging
the gap between these two kinds of textbooks by writing books covering the
whole of astrophysics at the level of Kittel’s Solid State Physics or Perkins’s
High Energy Physics – suitable for a one-semester course meant for students
who have already studied mechanics, electromagnetic theory, thermal physics,
quantum mechanics and mathematical methods at an advanced level. Whenever
I had to teach the course Fundamentals of Astrophysics in our department, I
found that there was no textbook which was suitable for use in the whole course.
The present book has grown out of the material I have taught in this course.
While writing this book, I have kept in mind that most of the students using
this book will not aspire to a professional career in astrophysics. So I have tried
to stress those aspects of astrophysics which are likely to be of interest to a
physicist who is not specializing in astrophysics. Astrophysics is an observational science and an acquaintance with the basic phenomenology is absolutely
essential for an appreciation of modern astrophysics. While I have introduced
the basic phenomenology throughout the book, I believe that a physics student
can appreciate astrophysics without knowing what a T Tauri star or what a BL
Lac object is. A student who wishes to be a professional astrophysicist and
has to master the terminology of the subject (which is sometimes of the nature
of historical baggage) can learn it from other books. Rather than covering the
details of too many topics, I have tried to develop the central themes of modern
astrophysics fully. The trouble with this approach is that no two astrophysicists
will completely agree as to what are central themes and what are details! I
have used my judgment to develop what I would consider a balanced account
of modern astrophysics. There is no doubt that experts in different areas of
astrophysics would feel that I have committed the cardinal sin of not covering
something in their area of specialization which they regard vitally important.
If I succeed in making experts in all different areas of astrophysics equally
unhappy, then I would conclude that I have written a balanced book! One other
principle I have followed is to give more stress on classical well-established
topics rather than topics which are still ill-understood or on which our present
views are likely to change drastically in future. To give readers a historical
perspective, I have sometimes deliberately chosen figures from original classic
papers rather than their more contemporary versions, unless the modern figures
supersede the original figures in essential and important ways. I have also intentionally kept away from topics which are too speculative or which do not have
close links with observational data at the present time, perhaps reflecting my
personal taste.
Virtually all branches of basic physics find applications in some topic of
astrophysics or other. I have assumed that the readers of this book would have

Детали