Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a graduate-level text covering the fundamental physics and chemistry required for a modern understanding of the interstellar medium. Radiation mechanisms are comprehensively presented, and extensive examples are drawn from observations in the X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, mm/sub mm, and radio observations. This book goes beyond a phenomenological study of the interstellar medium to give a detailed quantitative treatment of the radiative and dynamical interactions between stars and the interstellar medium. With an emphasis on a physical understanding of these processes, the mathematical derivations are clean, elegant and easily understandable by anyone with an undergraduate background in physics.
Table of Contents1 The Interstellar Medium 2 Fundamental Concepts of Radiation 3 Measurements of Radiation 4 Photoionization and Recombination 5 Line Radiation from Atoms and Ions 6 Continuum Radiation in the Gas Phase 7 Interstellar Molecules 8 Vibrational Spectroscopy of Polyatomic Molecules 9 Molecular Excitation and Abundance Determination 10 Interstellar Grains: Physical Processes 11 The Chemical Composition of Interstellar and Circumstellar Grains 12 Carbonaceous Grains 13 The Origin of Interstellar Dust 14 Chemical Reactions in the ISM 15 Gas Dynamics, Gravitational Collapse, and Stellar Winds 16 Interaction between Stars and the Interstellar Medium 17 Beyond the Galaxy
