Nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of galaxies / Bernard Pagel.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Introduction and overview -- Thermonuclear reactions -- Cosmic abundances of elements and isotopes -- Cosmological nucleosynthesis and abundances of light elements -- Outline of stellar structure and evolution -- Neutron capture processes -- Galactic chemical evolution : basic concepts and issues -- Some specific GCE models and related observational data -- Origin and evolution of light elements -- Radioactive cosmochronology -- Chemical evolution in other sorts of galaxies -- Cosmic chemical evolution and diffuse background radiation -- Appendix 1: Some historical landmarks -- Appendix 2: Some physical and astronomical constants -- Appendix 3: Time-dependent perturbation theory and transition probabilities -- Appendix 4: Polytropic stellar models -- Appendix 5: Dissipation and abundance gradients -- Appendix 6: Hints for problems.

The distribution of elements in the cosmos is the result of many processes, and it provides a powerful tool to study the Big Bang, the density of baryonic matter, nucleosynthesis and the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies. Covering many exciting topics in astrophysics and cosmology, this textbook, by a pioneer of the field, provides a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the interdisciplinary subject of galactic chemical evolution for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. It is also an authoritative overview for researchers and professional scientists. This new edition includes results from recent space missions and new material on abundances from stellar populations, nebular analysis, and meteoric isotopic anomalies, and abundance analysis of X-ray gas. Simple derivations for key results are provided, together with problems and helpful solution hints, enabling the student to develop an understanding of results from numerical models and real observations.