For the last few years astrophysicists and elementary particle physicists have been working jointly on the following fascinating phenomena: 1. The solar neutrino puzzle and the question: What happens to the neutrinos on their way from the sun to the earth? 2. The growing evidence that our universe is filled with about 10 times more matter than is visible and the question: What is dark matter made of? 3. The supernovae explosions and the question: What do neutrinos tell us about such explosions and vice versa? The experimental investigation of these phenomena is difficult and involves unconventional techniques. These are presently under development, and bring together such seemingly disparate disciplines as astrophysics and elementary particle physics on the one hand and superconductivity and solid-state physics on the other. This book contains the proceedings of a workshop held in March 1987 at which the above subjects and their experimental investigation were discussed. The proposed experimental methods are very new. They involve frontier developments in low temperature and solid-state physics. The book should be useful to researchers and students who actively work on these subjects or plan to enter the field. It also offers the non-expert reader with some physics background a good survey of the activities in this field.

As demonstrated by the contributions in this volume, the domain of superconducting and low-temperature devices is in a rapidly expanding phase. Interactions between materials sciences, low-temperature physics, astrophysics, nuclear and particle physics have provided the incentive for new experiments, which could ultimately record such rare interactions as double beta decay, neutrino scattering, or collisions of the elusive dark matter halo particles. The theoretical and experimental improvements achieved during the last year have been impressive. Detection of 60 keV resolution with a non-zero spin material as a target seems therefore realizable in the near future. Similarly, impressive achievements on ballistic phonons detection and superheated superconducting detectors have been presented, together with reliable techniques for developing ultra low noise electronics required by these ambitious experiments. Apart from the contributions presented during the symposium, the two original papers by Niinikoski proposing the use of bolometers as particle detectors have been included in this volume. These papers, despite their current interest, have never been published before. The comprehensive style of the papers will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike, in particular solid-state physicists will find the volume of considerable interest, as the field of materials research continues to benefit from the type of work presented here.

From the reviews: "Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts has appeared in semi-annual volumes since 1969 and it has already become one of the fundamental publications in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and neighbouring sciences. It is the most important English-language abstracting journal in the mentioned branches. ...The abstracts are classified under more than a hundred subject categories, thus permitting a quick survey of the whole extended material. The AAA is a valuable and important publication for all students and scientists working in the fields of astronomy and related sciences. As such it represents a necessary ingredient of any astronomical library all over the world." Space Science Reviews#1 "Dividing the whole field plus related subjects into 108 categories, each work is numbered and most are accompanied by brief abstracts. Fairly comprehensive cross-referencing links relevant papers to more than one category, and exhaustive author and subject indices are to be found at the back, making the catalogues easy to use. The series appears to be so complete in its coverage and always less than a year out of date that I shall certainly have to make a little more space on those shelves for future volumes." The Observatory Magazine#2

Most of the relevant topics on the dark matter in the universe are discussed. The present knowledge of the problem is presented and possible solutions are discussed. The actual experimental efforts devoted to determining the nature of the dark matter — baryonic (for instance, brown dwarfs) or non-baryonic (such as supersymmetric particles) — and to detecting it are illustrated, paying particular attention to necessary technological developments.

This volume provides an updated understanding of the progress and current problems in the interplay between fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology.In the last years, the cross section between these fields has been increasing, both at the theoretical and experimental levels: particle physics experiments, astronomical observations, space satellite data. Such interplay has fruitfully influenced research activity setting up Astrofundamental physics.Topics covered in this volume are: early universe, large scale structure of the universe, dark matter problem, cosmic microwave background radiation, gravitational wave astronomy and neutrino astrophysics. The inter-relation between these topics is important and a source of problems at the frontiers of present knowledge and experimental limits. Latest available data are constraining theory and models in these topics. The book reviews achievements, confronts theory and models with observations and provides information on the latest developments and discussions on future prospects.It also includes a section on stellar spectroscopy and spectrophotometry which covers Daniel Chalonge's work as well as present progress and future prospects in these fields.

The International Conference on Calorimetry in High Energy Physics has become the major forum for presenting the latest developments of calorimetry techniques. The eighth conference was attended by about 130 physicists from 20 countries and covered all aspects of calorimetric particle detection and measurements, with emphasis on high energy physics experiments.