Relativity and cosmology I

SUMMARY

The course is intended as an elementary introduction to General Relativity and its experimental tests.

CONTENT

Outline:

• The equivalence principle
  
• Introduction to differential geometry (covariant derivative, curvature, geodesics)
  
• The Einstein equations and the Einstein-Hilbert action
  
• Weak gravitational fields
  
• Gravitational waves
  
• The Schwarzschild solution and classical tests of GR
  
• Black holes
  

References

• Lecture notes (available on the moodle)
• N. Straumann, General Relativity 2nd Edition, Graduate Texts in Physics, Springer Verlag, Berlin 2013.
  
• R. Wald, General Relativity, Chicago University Press 1984.
  
• S. Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry, Pearson 2014.
  
• A. Zee, Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell, Princeton 2013.
  
• Alan P. Lightman, William H. Press, Richard H. Price, Saul A. Teukolsky, Problem book in Relativity and Gravitation. (more than 400 problems with solutions)