Lecture notes
Lecture notes C1 Astrophysics
- Module
- C1 Astrophysics
- Institution
- Oxford University (OX)
Detailed lecture notes for all elements of the course (taught ) with some exam question solutions included.
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C1 AstrophysicsRichard Anslow
C1 Revision
June 13, 2021
,2
,Contents
1 Radiative Processes 5
1.1 Spontaneous and collisional processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Example abundances calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Measuring abundances with 2 level atom models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 The 3 level atom: density and temperature diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 Exam ready: density and temperature diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Recombination lines and relative ionic abundances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.7 HII regions and planetary nebulae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.8 Absorption Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.9 Stellar Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.10 Dust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.11 The ISM and IGM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.11.1 Lyman alpha forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 High Energy Astrophysics 17
2.1 Gravitational wave physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.1 Stellar mass black hole mergers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.2 Neutron star mergers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1.3 Gravitational wave detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2 Cherenkov radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3 Shocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.4 Particle acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5 Synchrotron radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.6 Accretion Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.7 Viscosity and accretion discs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.8 Doppler beaming and boosting (Jets) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.9 Inverse-Compton scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.10 Blazars and inverse-Compton scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.11 The AGN zoo: Observational HEA TODO 2010 Q4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.12 Extracting energy from differentially rotating systems (MRI essay example) . . . . . . . 33
2.13 Thermal Bremsstrahlung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.14 Galaxy Clusters and the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.15 Blandford-Znajek mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3 Cosmology 39
3.1 Relativistic Cosmological Perturbation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2 Newtonian Cosmological Perturbation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3 The Evolution of Large Scale Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3
, 4 CONTENTS
3.3.1 Pressureless Fluid in the Matter Dominated Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.3.2 Pressureless Matter in the Λ Dominated Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.3 Relativistic Fluid in the Radiation Dominated Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.4 Pressureless Matter in the Radiation Dominated Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4 Radiation dominated universe: boundary matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5 Damping During Recombination: Silk Damping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.6 Massive Neutrinos and Free Streaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.7 Cooling in the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.8 CMB anisotropies: Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.9 Acoustic oscillations of baryons EdS Universes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.10 Gravitational lensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.11 Gravitational lensing 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4 Stellar Astrophysics and Galaxies 55
4.1 Galaxy luminosity functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Galaxy mass-to-light (scaling relations) TODO!!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3 Supernovae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3.1 Gravitational potential energy of a uniform sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.4 Radio pulsars and magnetars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.5 Supernovae lightcurves vs. stellar mergers TODO: 2010 Q6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.6 Stellar orbits in galactic centres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.7 Jeans equations and applications: spherical symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
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