Cosmic Gamma-Ray Sources

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Introduction

   • K. S. Cheng, Gustavo E. Romero

   Pages 1-20

3. Fundamentals of Gamma-Ray Astrophysics

   • Gustavo E. Romero, K. S. Cheng

   Pages 21-46

4. Galactic Gamma-Ray Sources

   • Isabelle A. Grenier

   Pages 47-67

5. Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Sources

   • Diego F. Torres

   Pages 69-103

6. Non-Thermal Emission from Early-Type Binaries

   • Gregor Rauw

   Pages 105-125

7. Gamma-Ray Emission from Supernova Remnants

   • Gustavo E. Romero

   Pages 127-147

8. Gamma Ray Pulsars

   • David J. Thompson

   Pages 149-168

9. Theories of Gamma-Ray Emission from Pulsars

   • K. S. Cheng

   Pages 169-203

10. High Energy Emission from Microquasars

    • Rob Fender, Tom Maccarone

    Pages 205-223

11. Gamma-Ray Bursts

    • T. Lu, Y. F. Huang, Z. G. Dai, D. M. Wei

    Pages 225-260

12. Clusters of Galaxies at High Energy Gamma-Rays

    • Olaf Reimer

    Pages 261-278

13. Diffuse Gamma Rays

    • Igor V. Moskalenko, Andrew W. Strong, Olaf Reimer

    Pages 279-310

14. Multifrequency Strategies for the Identification of Gamma-Ray Sources

    • Reshmi Mukherjee, Jules Halpern

    Pages 311-344

15. Future Ground-Based TeV Gamma-Ray Telescopes

    • Trevor C. Weekes

    Pages 345-359

16. GLAST: Understanding the High Energy Gamma-Ray Sky

    • Julie E. McEnery, Igor V. Moskalenko, Jonathan F. Ormes

    Pages 361-395

17. Back Matter

    Pages 397-408

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Gamma-ray astronomy has undergone an enormous progress in the last 15 years. The success of satellite experiments like NASA's Comp­ ton Gamma-Ray Observatory and ESA's INTEGRAL mission, as well as of ground-based instruments have open new views into the high-energy Universe. Different classes of cosmic gamma-ray sources have been now detected at different energies, in addition to young radio pulsars and gamma-ray bursts, the classical ones. The new sources include radio­ quiet pulsars, microquasars, supernova remnants, starburst galaxies, ra­ dio galaxies, flat-spectrum radio quasars, and BL Lacertae objects. A large number of unidentified sources strongly suggests that this brief enumeration is far from complete. Gamma-ray bursts are now estab­ lished as extragalactic sources with tremendous energy output. There is accumulating evidence supporting the idea that massive stars and star forming regions can accelerate charged particles up to relativistic ener­ gies making them gamma-ray sources. Gamma-ray astronomy has also proved to be a powerful tool for cosmology imposing constraints to the background photon fields that can absorb the gamma-ray flux from dis­ tant sources. All this has profound implications for our current ideas about how particles are accelerated and transported in both the local and distant U niverse. The evolution of our knowledge on the gamma-ray sky has been so fast that is not easy for the non-specialist scientist and the graduate student to be aware of the full potential of this field or to grasp the fundamentals of a given topic in order to attempt some original contribution.

• Galaxy
• Quasar
• astronomy
• astrophysics
• hadron
• stars

• University of Hongkong, China

  K. S. Cheng

• Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía — CONICET, Villa Elisa, Argentina

  Gustavo E. Romero

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