Astroparticle Physics

VPreface“The preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewersread a preface.”Philip GuedallaPreface to the English TranslationThis book on astroparticle physics is the translation of the book on ‘Astroteilchenphysik’published in German by Vieweg, Wiesbaden, in the year 2000. It is not only a translation,however, but also an update. The young field of astroparticle physics is developing sorapidly, in particular with respect to ‘new astronomies’ such as neutrino astronomy and thedetailed measurements of cosmic background radiation, that these new experimental resultsand also new theoretical insights need to be included.The details of the creation of the universe are not fully understood yet and it is stillnot completely clear how the world will end, but recent results from supernovae observationsand precise measurement of the primordial blackbody radiation seem to indicate withincreasing reliability that we are living in a flat Euclidean universe which expands in anaccelerated fashion.In the last couple of years cosmology has matured from a speculative science to a fieldof textbook knowledge with precision measurements at the percent level.The updating process has been advanced mainly by my colleague Dr. Glen Cowan whois lecturing on astroparticle physics at Royal Holloway College, London, and by myself.The chapter on ‘Cosmology’ has been rewritten, and chapters on ‘The Early Universe’,‘Big Bang Nucleosynthesis’, ‘The Cosmic Microwave Background’, and ‘Inflation’ as wellas a section on gravitational astronomy have been added. The old chapter on ‘UnsolvedProblems’ was moved into a new chapter on ‘Dark Matter’, and part of it went into chapterson primary and secondary cosmic rays.The book has been extended by a large number of problems related to astroparticlephysics. Full solutions to all problems are given. To ease the understanding of theoreticalaspects and the interpretation of physics data, a mathematical appendix is offered wheremost of the formulae used are presented and/or derived. In addition, details on the thermodynamicsof the early universe have been treated in a separate appendix.Prof. Dr. Simon Eidelman from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirskand Dipl.Phys. Tilo Stroh have carefully checked the problems and proposed new ones.Dr. Ralph Kretschmer contributed some interesting and very intricate problems. I have alsoreceived many comments from my colleagues and students in Siegen.The technical aspects of producing the English version lay in the hands of Ms. UteSmolik, Lisa Hoppe, and Ms. Angelika Wied (text), Dipl.Phys. Stefan Armbrust (updatedthe figures), Dr. Glen Cowan and Ross Richardson (polished my own English translation),