Teaching plan for the course unit

The objective of this course is to acquire observational and theoretical training in high-energy astrophysics. The course content, which covers basic areas of the field from a current perspective, is designed to prepare students for a career in research. However, students who intend to pursue careers in industry can also benefit from the content, which reinforces and extends a series of relevant skills.

The students begin by examining the physical mechanisms that can accelerate particles to high energies and radiation processes that lead to astrophysical sources. They then study the phenomenology of various kinds of astrophysical high-energy sources, such as supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, X-ray binary stars, pulsars and supernova remnants. During the course the students also examine the most recent observational results and their implications in the context of the available models.

High-energy astrophysics has entered a golden age in terms of the quality of the data being produced by space observatories and the unique opportunities this offers to researchers. The following X-ray observatory satellites, telescopes and detectors have played a notable role in providing this data.

— The Russian–German Spektr-RG’s eROSITA, the Italian Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the Japanese X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other soft X-ray satellites.

— NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the European Space Agency’s INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) and other hard X-ray satellites.

— The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) and other high-energy gamma-ray satellites.

— The MAGIC Florian Goebel Telescopes (La Palma), the five-telescope High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory’s VERITAS, the LST-1 on the northern array site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (La Palma), the American–Mexican High Altitude Water Cherenkov Experiment (HAWC), the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) and other Cherenkov telescopes and detectors.

— The IceCube Neutrino Observatory and other neutrino detectors.

— The American Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the European Gravitational Observatory’s Virgo interferometer, the Japanese Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) and other gravitational wave detectors.

The enormous amounts of data collected by these instruments over the years currently provides a constant source of material for scientists to pursue research on any number of fronts.