Physics 442: High Energy Astrophysics
Fall 2026

Instructor Andrew Baker Serin W309 Phone: 848-445-8887 Email: ajbaker[at]physics.rutgers.edu Office hours: Thu 11:00am-12:00pm & 2:00-3:00pm Venue Mon/Thu 8:30-9:50am in Hill Center 009

Textbooks

There is one required textbook for this course:

• Horvath (2022), High-Energy Astrophysics: A Primer (ISBN-13 9780521674423 for paperback)

Overview

Here's the official description from the course catalog:

Prerequisite(s): 01:750:342 or (361 and 385-386)

Radiation and scattering processes in plasma. Detection and X- and gamma-rays. Supernovae and remnants, pulsars. Gamma-ray bursts. Accretion disks and binary star outbursts. Quasars and active galactic nuclei. Cosmic rays.

I plan to broaden this list of topics to include important recent discoveries (e.g., studies of black holes using gravitational waves and very long baseline interferometry), and in general, subjects that are important to areas of current research in Galactic and extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology.

Schedule

Both the sequence of lectures and the assignment due dates are preliminary at this point; I will update them as needed during the course of the semester.

I will include in the schedule the dates of any local talks that are relevant to the subject matter of this course. Attendance is encouraged but not required!

LECTURE	DATE	TOPIC	TEXT	DUE
1	Sep 3	high energy astrophysics overview	—
2	Sep 8	special relativity	—	HW0
3	Sep 10	collisions and ionization losses	—
4	Sep 14	radiation basics	—	HW1
5	Sep 17	photon interactions with matter	2.2
6	Sep 21	blackbody radiation	2.1; 2.3.1	HW2
7	Sep 24	thermal emission/bremsstrahlung	2.3.2
8	Sep 28	synchrotron radiation	2.3.3	HW3
9	Oct 1	thermal equilibrium	—
10	Oct 5	high energy detectors	3.1; 3.2; 3.4	HW4
11	Oct 8	telescopes	3.3
12	Oct 12	cosmology and galaxy clusters	—	HW5
13	Oct 15	mid-term exam (in-class)	—
14	Oct 19	stellar evolution
15	Oct 22	supernova classification
16	Oct 26	supernova mechanisms		HW6
17	Oct 29	shocks and supernova remnants
18	Nov 2	compact objects		HW7
19	Nov 5	neutron stars and black holes
20	Nov 9	black hole binaries		HW8
21	Nov 12	motion around black holes
22	Nov 16	accretion		HW9
23	Nov 19	radio interferometry
24	Nov 23	radio jets		HW10
25	Nov 30	fast radio bursts
26	Dec 3	particle acceleration
27	Dec 7	pulsars and wind nebulae		HW11
28	Dec 10	Compton processes; the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect

Grading

Your course grade will be based on a weighted combination of four elements:

• participation during class, which includes no use of personal devices for texting or emailing (10%)
• homework assignments (40%)
• midterm exam (20%)
• final project (30%)

Class participation will be scored as follows for each session:

• 10/10 points for asking or answering a question during class
• 7/10 points for being present and attentive during class
• 4/10 points for using a personal device to text or email during class

Homework assignments will generally be made available on Monday and submitted (by emailed or uploaded PDF before 11:59pm) the following Monday. They will include straightforward examples or extensions of material discussed in lecture, and more involved applications to areas of current research, which may encompass some computational work (especially later in the semester).

The midterm exam will be in class on October 15.

The final project will include an oral presentation and a written paper on a scientific or technical topic relevant to high-energy astrophysics. The paper should be written in LaTeX. More information will be provided about this assignment as the semester progresses.

Other items

• Absences
  If I have to miss any of our regularly scheduled classes, they will be taught by guest lecturers in my absence. If you need to miss a class for some reason, please file a report at this website. I will only exclude a given absence from the calculation of your class participation score if you file an absence report. Note also that since I will only be posting slides and equation sheets to the course website, you will not have the full context of the lecture, and you may need to rely on your classmates' notes to fill any gaps.
• Late assignments
  Unless you request advance permission and I grant it to you, I will start docking points at a rate of 10% off the top per day for each assignment.
• Collaboration policy
  On homework assignments, you should first try every exercise yourself before discussing it with others. If you get stuck (or finish and would like to compare answers), you may discuss exercises with other students in the course and/or me, but you should always write up your own solutions and indicate on your solutions whom you collaborated with. You may consult books and published papers, but not old solution sets from previous offerings of this course or similar courses elsewhere.
• Students with disabilities
  If you have a disability, let me know early in the semester so that we can make the necessary arrangements for you to have a successful learning experience. Please consult this web page for more details.