Welcome to the Homepage of the High Energy Astrophysics Theory Group at MPIK Heidelberg
Main areas of scientific work
The activity of the our group covers several areas of Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics:
origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays, in particular in the context of
particle acceleration in shell type supernova remnants,
pulsar wind nebulae, X-ray binary systems;
nonthermal processes in the Galactic Center;
processes of acceleration and radiation of electrons
and protons in relativistic outflows - in
pulsar winds, in microquasars, in small and large scale jets
of active galactic nuclei, in GRBs;
gamma-ray and neutrino
production mechanisms in different astrophysical environments;
links between high energy gamma-ray astronomy and neutrino astronomy;
theoretical aspects of the imaging atmospheric cherenkov technique;
physics of compact relativistic objects;
prompt optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts.
Although these studies have rather general character and are
not limited by specific objects, astrophysical scenarios, radiation processes,
energy bands, etc., generally they are conducted in the context of high energy gamma-ray phenomena recently
revealed, in particular by HESS,
in different galactic and extragalactic source populations.
Our group has a status of the second official group representing MPIK in the HESS collaboration. Therefore, a substantial fraction of the work of our group is conducted within the framework of the HESS experiment,
especially in the context of interpretation of very high energy gamma-ray observations.
High Energy Astrophysics Theory Group
