Cover

High-energy astrophysics is one of the most active branches in the contemporary astrophysics. It studies astrophysical objects that emit X-ray and γ-ray photons, such as accreting super-massive and stellar-size black holes, and various species of neutron stars. With the operations of many space-borne and ground-based observational facilities, high-energy astrophysics has enjoyed rapid development in the past decades. It is foreseen that the field will continue to advance rapidly in the coming decade, with possible ground-breaking discoveries of astrophysical sources in the high-energy neutrino and gravitational wave channels. This Special Issue of Frontiers of Physics is dedicated to a systematic survey of the field of high-energy astrophysics as it stands in 2013. The Cover images show an artist’s impression on some high-energy astrophysical phenomena: an accreting black hole (top inset, credit: http://www.nasa.gov), a neutron star (bottom inset, credit: http://www.dailygalaxy.com), and an energetic jet launched from a black hole or a neutron star (the main image, credit: http://en.wikipedia.org).

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