MOTIVATION AND PURPOSE
Recent years have seen much progress in the study of the basic
mechanisms responsible for high-energy emission from astrophysical
plasmas. From the wealth of data from observatories such as Einstein,
EXOSAT, Ginga, IUE, ROSAT, EUVE, GRO, ASCA, SAX, RXTE and Yohkoh, it
is now clear that many common physical processes are at work in different
astrophysical systems. Magnetohydrodynamic processes, for example,
play key dynamical roles in the solar corona and in accreting
systems in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and Galactic compact objects.
Magnetic reconnection processes, thought to be involved in
heating of the solar corona, are expected to occur in accretion disks
and neutron star magnetospheres. The physics of emission from
highly-relativistic plasmas is critical to understanding jets from
AGN, supernovae and the relativistic fireballs now thought responsible
for cosmic gamma ray bursts. Plasma processes were also of crucial
importance in the early universe, and affected the development of
the primordial magnetic field and the development of structure.
Though similar physical processes are encountered by researchers
studying compact objects, accreting sources, supernovae, the Sun and
the early universe, researchers from these different subfields
interact surprisingly little. The purpose of the proposed symposium
is to bring together experts from different subfields of high-energy
astrophysics who encounter common questions in their research. Our
goal is to create a forum in which the participants can benefit from the
expertise of others who have worked on similar problems in different
astrophysical contexts. With launches of AXAF, XMM, ASTRO-E, HESSI, and
ABRIXAS
imminent, we expect that this conference, proposed for the summer of
1999, will form an ideal environment in which to discuss the exciting
new results from these observatories.