This text continues the exploration of the use of MATLAB tools and features in visualizing physical processes. The symbolic math packages are important in solving those problems which are amenable to closed form solution, while the numerical packages are used for the remaining problems. The results for the solutions use the MATLAB graphics packages to help visualize the properties of the solutions. User dialogues are designed to allow users to change the input parameters in order to see how the dynamics of the solutions depends on the parameters of the specific problem. In particular movies are used to display the dynamical evolution of solutions in time.

Some twenty years ago the author published a book entitled The Physics of Particle Detectors. Much has evolved since that time, not in the basic physics, but in the complexity, number and versatility of the detectors commonly used in experiments, beam-lines and accelerators. Those changes have been heavily influenced by the concurrent dramatic changes in the microelectronics industry. In parallel, the use of computer-aided teaching has also greatly improved. The present volume explores the physics needed to understand the full suite of front-end devices in use today. In particular the physics explanation is made concurrently with the specific device being discussed, thus making the coupling more immediate. That study is made more interactive by using newer educational tools now available such as dynamic Matlab Apps.

'The computer simulations can readily illustrate the physical ideas inside the equations and leave the reader immediately able to perform new simulations. The book is aimed at a new student of accelerator physics, and would be suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate study. The book would also be interesting for a professional looking to use Matlab in their work … The text is nicely written and easy to follow … This book is ideally suited to a student new to the field who would like to quickly get up to speed with making real numerical simulations.'Contemporary PhysicsThis book explores a first introduction to particle beams and accelerators. The text uses the suite of tools made available in the MATLAB package. Since many colleges have a site wide license, these tools are often freely available to students. A brief introduction to those tools is made initially. Analogues in classical optics are introduced where useful. The text is compact and focuses on graphical data display and dynamical 'movies' as an aid to understanding specific systems. Hands on dialogue using command line inputs, 'apps', and 'live' tools are stressed. The extensive algebraic steps are subsumed into the associated scripts, where the symbolic math utilities spare the reader from the math manipulations. Both beams and periodic structures are covered. Dispersion, insertions, acceleration and light sources are discussed.

Recent advances in the understanding of star formation and evolution have been impressive and aspects of that knowledge are explored in this volume. The black hole stellar endpoints are studied and geodesic motion is explored. The emission of gravitational waves is featured due to their very recent experimental discovery.The second aspect of the text is space exploration which began 62 years ago with the Sputnik Earth satellite followed by the landing on the Moon just 50 years ago. Since then Mars has been explored remotely as well as flybys of the outer planets and probes which have escaped the solar system. The text explores many aspects of rocket travel. Finally possibilities for interstellar travel are discussed.All these topics are treated in a unified way using the Matlab App to combine text, figures, formulae and numeric input and output. In this way the reader may vary parameters and see the results in real time. That experience aids in building up an intuitive feel for the many specific problems given in this text.

This volume is now more than a decade old, and much has transpired since then. The MATLAB tools have evolved from scripts, to Apps and at present to Live code. The Live package is preferred because it combines text and equations with MATLAB code all in a single site. The results of that code, formerly shown separately, also appear in line and in this way the user can vary the parameters of the specific problem and explore immediately how the solutions vary in response. For this reason, the Live scheme is used exclusively in this edition.The physics landscape has also evolved in the last decade. The Nobel prize in 2006 rewarded the discovery of small perturbation in temperature, at the parts per million level of the extreme isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The basic isotropy is now thought to indicate a period of rapid expansion of the Universe, called 'inflation'. With those discoveries, there has been more emphasis on astrophysics and cosmology, which contributes to advances in physics over the last decade. These changes have been reflected in the problems which are explored in this volume.

This volume makes explicit use of the synergy between cosmology and high energy physics, for example, supersymmetry and dark matter, or nucleosynthesis and the baryon-to-photon ratio. In particular the exciting possible connection between the recently discovered Higgs scalar and the scalar field responsible for inflation is explored.The recent great advances in the accuracy of the basic cosmological parameters is exploited in that no free scale parameters such as h appear, rather the basic calculations are done numerically using all sources of energy density simultaneously. Scripts are provided that allow the reader to calculate exact results for the basic parameters. Throughout MATLAB tools such as symbolic math, numerical solutions, plots and 'movies' of the dynamical evolution of systems are used. The GUI package is also shown as an example of the real time manipulation of parameters which is available to the reader.All the MATLAB scripts are made available to the reader to explore examples of the uses of the suite of tools which are available. Indeed, readers should be able to engage in a command line 'dialogue' or go on to edit the scripts and write their own versions.

Scientific Python is taught from scratch in this book via copious, downloadable, useful and adaptable code snippets. Everything the working scientist needs to know is covered, quickly providing researchers and research students with the skills to start using Python effectively.