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Informationen zum Autor Yasunori Fujii received his PhD on the analogy between the strong interaction and the electromagnetic interaction, from Nagoya University in 1959. Between 1963 and 1992 he did research on the theory of particle physics and gravity, including pioneering work on the idea of non-Newtonian gravity, at the Institute of Physics, University of Tokyo. During this period, he also spent two years at Stanford University, California and a year at Purdue University, Indiana. He is currently emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo-Komaba and continues to pursue his research interests at the Nihon Fukushi University. Kai-Ichi Maeda received his PhD from Kyoto University in 1980. He and his contemporaries created a new research group in Kyoto, which was at the root of numerical relativity research in Japan. In 1983 he became a postdoctoral student at SISSA, Trieste working under Dennis Sciama. He moved to the Meudon Observatory in Paris in 1987 and worked on black hole solutions in string theory. In 1989 Professor Maeda became affiliated with the Department of Physics at Waseda University, Japan. Since 1998, he has been the associate editor of the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation, and also the vice-chief editor of the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan since 2001. Klappentext The scalar-tensor theory of gravitation is one of the most popular alternatives to Einstein’s theory of gravitation. This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the theoretical ideas and developments! exploring scalar fields and placing them in context with a discussion of Brans-Dicke theory. Topics covered include the cosmological constant problem! time variability of coupling constants! higher dimensional space-time! branes and conformal transformations. The authors emphasize the physical applications of the scalar-tensor theory and thus provide a pedagogical overview of the subject! keeping more mathematically detailed sections for the appendices. This book is suitable for graduate courses in cosmology! gravitation and relativity. It will also provide a valuable reference for researchers. Zusammenfassung A pedagogical overview of the theoretical ideas behind the cosmological constant problem! in particular the scalar-tensor theory! which is one of the most popular alternative theories of gravitation. Covering many developments in the field! including branes and quintessence! it will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers alike. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface; Conventions and notation; 1. Introduction; 2. The prototype Brans-Dicke model; 3. Conformal transformation; 4. Cosmology with ¿; 5. Models of an accelerating universe; 6. Quantum effects; Appendices; References; Index....
