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Published November 23, 2025 | Version v3
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Book on Astrophysical Radiation

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley

Description

This is a free ebook for astronomy undergraduate and graduate students, shared only for educational purposes.

The current version contains: description of radiation field, radiative transfer, special relativity, fields of moving charges, plasma physics, free-free process, Compton scattering, and synchrotron/curvature emission.

The author plans to improve existing text, make the references more complete, and add additional sections/chapters, so the book will be updated semi-regularly. You comments (big or small) are welcome and please send them to wenbinlu.at.berkeley.edu

Files

radiation_book.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.15760270

Dates

Created
2025-06-28
8 chapters
Updated
2025-08-01
Section 7.2 (KN diff cross-section) updated for better clarity based on earlier comments
Updated
2025-11-23
Section 2.1.2 (Saha-Boltzmann equation) updated with better treatment for max quantum number n_max, Section 8.3.1 (synchrotron spectrum) updated with more accurate fittings of F(x) and R(y)