Related papers: Abundance Determinations from Gamma Ray Spectrosco…
Cosmic rays may provide opportunities for probing fundamental physics. For example, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays might originate from the decays of metastable heavy particles, and astrophysical gamma rays can be used to test models of…
Astrophysical sources of nuclei are expected to produce a broad spectrum of isotopes, many of which are unstable. An unstable nucleus can beta-decay outside the source into a single-electron ion. Heavy one-electron ions, thus formed, can be…
A review of the spectroscopic tools needed to characterize AGNs is presented. This review focusses on ultraviolet, optical and infrared emission-line diagnostics specifically designed to help differentiate AGNs from starburst-dominated…
Gamma-ray burst sources appear to fulfill all the conditions for being efficient cosmic ray accelerators, and being extremely compact, are also expected to produce multi-GeV to PeV neutrinos. I review the basic model predictions for the…
Multiwavelength observations suggest that clusters are reservoirs of vast amounts relativistic electrons and positrons that are either injected into and accelerated directly in the intra-cluster medium, or produced as secondary pairs by…
We introduce neutrino astronomy from the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of 10^{20} and 10^{13} eV, respectively. Although the discovery of cosmic rays dates back close to a century, we…
Nuclear gamma-ray lines constitute the most genuine diagnostic tool of nuclear astrophysics, since they allow for an unambiguous identification of isotopic species. Continuous improvement in instrumentation led to the discovery of several…
Gamma rays from the annihilation of dark matter particles in the Galactic halo provide a particularly promising means of indirectly detecting dark matter. Here, we demonstrate that pronounced spectral features at energies near the dark…
This is a review of high energy neutrino astronomy that might be done with a kilometer-scale detector. The emphasis is on diffuse neutrinos of extragalactic origin and their relation to possible sources of the highest energy cosmic rays,…
We predict a new class of very intense, short-duration AGN flares capable of accelerating the highest energy cosmic rays, resulting from the tidal disruption of a star or from a disk instability. The rate and power of these flares readily…
Diffuse $\gamma$-ray emission produced by the interaction of cosmic-ray particles with matter and radiation in the Galaxy can be used to probe the distribution of cosmic rays and their sources in different regions of the Galaxy. With its…
Galactic cosmic rays are believed to be accelerated at supernova remnant shocks. Gamma-ray observations of both supernova remnants and associated molecular clouds have been used in several occasions to test (so far quite successfully) this…
Gamma-ray absorption due to gamma-gamma-pair creation on cosmological scales depends on the line-of-sight integral of the evolving density of low-energy photons in the Universe, i.e. on the history of the diffuse, isotropic radiation field.…
We give an upper estimate for the number of gamma ray bursts from ordinary (non-superconducting) cosmic strings expected to be observed at terrestrial detectors. Assuming that cusp annihilation is the mechanism responsible for the bursts we…
It has been suggested that cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can produce the observed flux of cosmic rays at the highest energies. However, recent studies of GRBs indicate that their redshift distribution likely follows that of the…
Star formation in galaxies is observed to be associated with gamma-ray emission. The detection of gamma rays from star-forming galaxies by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has allowed the determination of a functional relationship…
Nuclear physics offers us a powerful tool: using nuclear resonance absorption lines to infer the physical conditions in astrophysical settings which are otherwise difficult to deduce. Present-day technology provides an increase in…
The validity of oxygen and nitrogen abundances derived from the global emission-line spectra of galaxies via the P-method has been investigated using a collection of published spectra of individual HII regions in irregular and spiral…
The physics results of high energy gamma-ray astronomy are reported, emphasizing recent achievements with ground-based detectors. This includes some of the instrumental developments and latest projects. The fundamental contribution of the…
We present a new method to derive oxygen and carbon abundances using the ultraviolet (UV) lines emitted by the gas-phase ionised by massive stars. The method is based on the comparison of the nebular emission-line ratios with those…