From early Chinese astronomy to the most recent high precision, multi-wavelength observations, supernovae have been actively examined for centuries. In recent years, this intense study has yielded great insight into the physics of supernovae and their impact on a wide variety of subjects, from cosmology to astrobiology.
The unprecedented growth of observational information, the ever increasing computational power for modeling, and the deep multidisciplinary connections of supernovae to stellar physics, galactic evolution, astrochemistry, and cosmic ray origin motivated the publication of this contributed volume. The book provides insights on current progress in the field and presents open-ended questions for future supernova studies.
Originally published in Space Science Reviews in the Topical Collection "Supernovae"

About the Author: Andrei Bykov is head of High Energy Astrophysics Division in the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences and Professor of St. Petersburg State Politechnical University. His principal research interest is theory and observations of physical processes in astrophysical objects with extreme energy release -- supernovae, pulsars, gamma-ray bursts and clusters of galaxies. He is the author and coauthor of over 200 scientific publications as well as the book Turbulence, Current Sheets and Shocks in Cosmic Plasma. He is the editor of five books on high energy astrophysics.
Roger Chevalier has been the W. H. Vanderbilt Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia since 1990. After obtaining his PhD from Princeton University in 1973, he joined the scientific staff of Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. He moved to the University of Virginia in 1979, where he was Astronomy Department chair from 1985 - 88 and 1989 - 92. His research has centered on theoretical studies of rapidly expanding astronomical sources, including supernovae, supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts, pulsar wind nebulae, and galactic superwinds. Chevalier was chair of the science panel on Stars and Stellar Evolution for the 2010 astronomy decadal survey. His honors include Virginia's Outstanding Scientist Award (1991), the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (1996), and election to the National Academy of Sciences (1996). John Raymond is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His main scientific interests cover the fields of spectroscopy and physics of the solar corona, the physics and spectroscopy of collisionless shock waves in supernova remnants and the physics of winds from accretion disks on X-ray emitting binaries.
Friedrich-Karl Thielemann is professor emeritus at the Physics Department of the University of Basel and is also affiliated with the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. He has been awarded the Hans A. Bethe Prize of the American Physical Society (2008) and the Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society (2012), is associate editor for astrophysics of Reviews of Modern Physics and acts as president of the platform Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. His scientific interests cover the fields of stellar evolution, stellar explosions, compact objects, supernovae, X-ray bursts, Gamma-Ray Bursts, neutron star mergers, the underlying nuclear physics aspects, and their nucleosynthesis contribution to the evolution of galaxies. He is author of more than 240 refereed publications.
Maurizio Falanga received his university degree for Theoretical Physics and Astronomy at the University of Basel, Switzerland and his PhD degree in astrophysics from the University of Rome "La Sapienza," Italy. He received the venia docendi in physics from the University of Basel in 2013. His scientific background is in high-energy astrophysics (hot universe and compact objects). Since 2009, he has been the Science Program Manager at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland. Between 2013 and 2018, he was appointed and served as the founding Executive Director of the International Space Sciences Institute in Beijing, China. He is author and coauthor of roughly 200 published papers and is editor of several books in his research fields.
Rudolf von Steiger holds an MSc in theoretical physics (1984), a PhD in experimental physics (1988), and a habilitation in extraterrestrial physics (1995) from the University of Bern. He was a coinvestigator of the Solar Wind Ion Composition Experiment (SWICS) on Ulysses and an associated scientist of the AMPTE and ACE missions. Currently he is a director at the International Space Science Institute and holds an associate professorship at the University of Bern, both since 1999. He has published more than 200 scientific papers, primarily on the solar atmosphere, solar wind, and their composition.