THE BIG BANG AND OTHER EXPLOSIONS IN NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS
by David N Schramm (Univ. Chicago)
David N Schramm (PhD. California Institute of Technology) is the Vice President for Research and the Louis Block Professor of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is a Professor in the Department of Physics, the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Committee on Conceptual Foundations of Science, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College. He was also the founder of the astrophysics group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois and continues an association there. His research has covered a variety of topics in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology including supernovae, dark matter, the age of the universe and the origin of elements. He is perhaps best known for his work unifying the fields of big bang cosmology and elementary particle physics. His prediction from cosmology about the number of fundamental families of elementary particles has now been verified by accelerator experiments at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and SLAC in Palo Alto, California. This is one of the only examples of a cosmological argument being verified in a laboratory experiment. Prof Schramm, who was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1986, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and the Hungarian Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1995, is the recipient of numerous awards including the 1st Annual Robert J Trumpler Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1976, the 1978 Helen 3. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the 1980 Gravity Research Prize, the 1984 Richtmeyer Memorial Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the 1989 Einstein Medal from Eötvös University in Budapeat, Hungary, and the 1993 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. Prof Schramm has served on or chaired more than 40 government-sponored committees and subcommittees and is the chairman of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council.
This volume of important papers by one the world's leading astrophysicists provides a sweeping survey of the incisive and exciting applications of nuclear and particle physics to a wide range of problems in astrophysics and cosmology.
The prime focus of the book is on Big Bang cosmology and the role of primordial nucleosynthesis in establishing the modern consensus on the Big Bang. This leads into the connection of cosmology to particle physics and the constraints put on various elementary particles by astrophysical arguments. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis has also led to the argument for nonbaryonic dark matter and is thus related to the major problem in physical cosmology today, namely, structure formation. The nuclear-particle interface with astrophysics also extends to the other topics of major interest such as the age of the universe, cosmic rays, supernovae, and solar neutrinos, each of which will be discussed in some detail. Each section contains historical papers, current papers, and frequently a popular article on the subject which provides an overview of the topic.
This volume is testimony to the success of the integration of nuclear and particle physics with astrophysics and cosmology, and to the ingenuity of the work in this area which has earned the author numerous prestigious awards. The book, which is accessible to beginning graduate students, should be of particular interest to researchers and students in astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and gravitation, and also in high energy and nuclear physics.
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