A whole decades research collated, organised and synthesised into one single book! Following a 60-page review of the seminal treatises of Misner, Thorne, Wheeler and Weinberg on general relativity, Glendenning goes on to explore the internal structure of compact stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars, hybrids, strange quark stars, both the counterparts of neutron stars as well as of dwarfs. This is a self-contained treatment and will be of interest to graduate students in physics and astrophysics as well as others entering the field.

This introduction to compact star physics explains key concepts from general relativity, thermodynamics and nuclear physics.

This self-contained textbook brings together many different branches of physics--e.g. nuclear physics, solid state physics, particle physics, hydrodynamics, relativity--to analyze compact objects. The latest astronomical data is assessed. Over 250 exercises.

There are reasons to believe the 21st century will be the best ever for astrophysics: the James Webb Space Telescope will extend nearly twenty times the present observational limit of visible light; neutrino massiveness opens a new window for exploration on dark energy and dark matter physics and is expected to provide insights into the fate of the Universe; the Higgs boson may allow for an understanding of the weakness of gravity; gravitational waves produced at the birth of the Universe and by compact stellar objects (supermassive black holes, black hole/neutron star mergers, gamma-ray bursts, white dwarf inspirals) have unveiled a new area of astronomy. Against this background, compact stars, the theme of this volume, present unique astrophysical laboratories for probing the fabric of space-time and the building blocks of matter and their interactions at physical regimes not attainable in terrestrial laboratories.

• Provides a self-contained and consistent treatment of the subject that does not require advanced previous knowledge of the field. • Explores the subject with a new focus on gravitational waves and astrophysical relativity, unlike current introductory textbooks. • Fully up-to-date, containing the latest developments and discoveries in the field.

Space observations are currently providing a glimpse of various new states of matter possibly present in compact stars, with terrestrial laboratories producing compelling evidence in support. The aim of this book is to facilitate the exchange of ideas ? both established and emergent, both theoretical and experimental ? in the areas of the physics of neutrinos, dense hadronic matter and compact stars.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: ? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings? (ISTP? / ISI Proceedings)? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)? CC Proceedings ? Engineering & Physical Sciences

The purpose and motivation of these lectures can be summarized in the following two questions: • What is the ground state (and its properties) of dense matter? • What is the matter composition of a compact star? The two questions are, of course, strongly coupled to each other. Depending on your point of view, you can either consider the ?rst as the main question and the second as a consequence or application of the ?rst, or vice versa. If you are interested in fundamental questions in particle physics you may take the former point of view: you ask the question what happens to matter if you squeeze it more and more. This leads to fundamental questions because at some level of suf?cient squeezing you expect to reach the point where the fundamental degrees of freedom and their interactions become important. That is, at some point you will reach a form of matter where not molecules or atoms, but the constituents of an atom, namely neutrons, protons, and electrons, are the relevant degrees of freedom.