Course information

High energy astrophysics is the study of the Universe through radiation and messengers emitted by high energy or decaying particles. These particles are heated or accelerated close to deep gravitational potentials (such as black-hole and neutron stars), large electro-magnetic fields, shocks in diffuse media or forged in stars. High energy astrophysics uses information from about 50 decades of energy: in addition to the twenty decades of energy observable in the photon space, about ten additional decades are available in each of the spectra of gravitational waves, atomic nuclei, and neutrinos. High-energy astrophysics studies processes that are surprisingly similar in black-holes of masses spanning ten orders of magnitude and widely different in sources featuring magnetic fields or geometrical sizes varying by twenty orders of magnitude. These processes arise often in extreme physical conditions and their understanding require the combination of many fields of modern physics and participate to the understanding of the interstellar medium, stars, stellar remnants, galaxies, clusters, cosmology, gravity and particle physics. 

Key content & notions: 
- Radiation processes, particle acceleration and cosmic-rays 
- Accretion 
- Astrophysical accelerators and targets 
- Stars, compact objects, X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei 
- Jets, gamma-ray bursts, kilonova and gravitational waves 
- Diffuse sources, pulsar wind nebula and supernova remnants