

1.1 Current fields of
research
Relativity is a necessary ingredient for describing astrophysical
phenomena involving compact objects. Among these phenomena are core
collapse supernovae, X-ray binaries, pulsars, coalescing neutron
stars, formation of black holes, micro-quasars, active galactic
nuclei, superluminal jets and gamma-ray bursts. General
relativistic effects must be considered when strong gravitational
fields are encountered as, for example, in the case of coalescing
neutron stars or near black holes. The significant gravitational
wave signal produced by some of these phenomena can also only be
understood in the framework of the theory of general relativity.
There are, however, astrophysical phenomena which involve flows at
relativistic speeds but no strong gravitational fields, and thus at
least certain aspects of these phenomena can be described within
the framework of special relativity.
Another field of research, where special
relativistic “flows” are encountered, are heavy-ion collision
experiments performed with large particle accelerators. The heavy
ions are accelerated up to ultra-relativistic velocities to study
various aspects of heavy ion collision physics (like, e.g.,
multi-particle production, the occurrence of nuclear shock waves,
collective flow phenomena, or dissipative processes), to explore
the equation of state for hot dense nuclear matter, and to find
evidence for the existence of the quark-gluon plasma.

