Read more
Provides advanced students with an introduction to modern galactic dynamics, and equips them with useful observational and theoretical tools.
List of contents
Preface to the first edition; Preface to the second edition; Acknowledgments; Part I. Basic Phenomenology: 1. Scales; 2. Observational windows; 3. Classifications; 4. Photometry, kinematics and dark matter; 5. Basic questions, semi-empirical approach and the dynamical window; Part II. Physical Models: 6. Self-gravity and relation to plasma physics; 7. Relaxation times, absence of thermodynamical equilibrium; 8. Models; 9. Equilibrium and stability: symmetry; 10. Classical ellipsoids; 11. Introduction to dispersive waves; 12. Jeans instability; Part III. Spiral Galaxies: 13. Orbits; 14. The basic state: vertical and horizontal equilibrium of the disk; 15. Density waves; 16. Roles of gas; 17. Global spiral modes; 18. Spiral structure in galaxies; 19. Bending waves; 20. Dark matter in spiral galaxies; Part IV. Elliptical Galaxies: 21. Orbits; 22. Stellar dynamical models; 23. Stability; 24. Dark matter in elliptical galaxies; Part V. In Perspective: 25. Selected aspects of formation and evolution; 26. Galaxies and gravitational lensing; 27. Self-gravitating accretion disks; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Giuseppe Bertin is Professor of Physics at the University of Milan, Italy; previously he was in the faculty of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. He has also held several positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara (in 2006 and 2009). Professor Bertin is also author of Spiral Structure in Galaxies: A Density Wave Theory with C. C. Lin, and editor of the proceedings of a series of three international workshops on plasmas in the laboratory and in the universe. He is the recipient of the Italian National Academy's Premio del Presidente della Repubblica in Science for 2013.
