Stars as Laboratories for Fundamental Physics - MPP Theory Group

Preface
xxi
quoted “astrophysical bounds on the axion mass” are really transformed
bounds on their interaction strength. This chapter also summarizes
recent developments of the putative cosmological role of axions. Chapter
15 takes up a variety of hypotheses which can be tested by the
methods developed in this book. Finally, Chapter 16 is an attempt at
a bottom line of what we have learned about neutrino properties in the
astrophysical laboratory.
⋄
Parts of my presentation are devoted to theoretical and calculational
fine points of particle dispersion and emission effects in media. I
find some of these issues quite intriguing in their own right. Still, the
main goal has been to provide an up-to-date overview of what we know
about elementary particles and their interactions on the basis of established
stellar properties and on the basis of measured or experimentally
constrained stellar particle fluxes.
All those whose lives are spent searching for truth are well
aware that the glimpses they catch of it are necessarily fleeting,
glittering for an instant only to make way for new and
still more dazzling insights. The scholar’s work, in marked
contrast to that of the artist, is inevitably provisional. He
knows this and rejoices in it, for the rapid obsolescence of
his books is the very proof of the progress of scholarship.
(Henri Pirenne, 1862−1935)
In spite of this bittersweet insight, and in spite of some inevitable
errors of omission and commission, I hope that my book will be of some
use to researchers, scholars, and students interested in the connection
between fundamental physics and stars.
Munich, May 1995.