Student''s Guide to General Relativity

Presents the key features of general relativity to help students understand its core ideas and the basics of differential geometry.

List of contents

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Vectors, tensors and functions; 3. Manifolds, vectors and differentiation; 4. Energy, momentum and Einstein's equations; Appendix A. Special relativity - a brief introduction; Appendix B. Solutions to Einstein's equations; Appendix C. Notation; Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Norman Gray is a research fellow at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, where he has regularly taught the General Relativity honours course since 2002. He was educated at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, and completed his Ph.D. in particle theory at the UK's Open University. His current research relates to astronomical data management and he is an Editor of the journal Astronomy and Computing.

Summary

This compact guide presents key features of general relativity to help students understand its core ideas and the basics of differential geometry. It describes how general covariance and the equivalence principle motivate Einstein's theory of gravitation and introduces the mathematical technology which allows us to understand Einstein's equations.

Product details

• Authors: Norman Gray, Norman (University of Glasgow) Gray, GRAY NORMAN
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2018
• EAN: 9781107183469
• ISBN: 978-1-107-18346-9
• No. of pages: 162
• Series: Student's Guides; Student's Guides
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Physics, astronomy > Astronomy; SCIENCE / Physics / General, SCIENCE / Physics / Mathematical & Computational, SCIENCE / Physics / Relativity, Physics, Relativity physics, Mathematical physics