General Relativity for the Gifted Amateur
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 30 January 2025
- ISBN 9780192867414
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages640 pages
- Size 246x190x30 mm
- Weight 1370 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 302 line illustrations and cartoons 793
Categories
Short description:
Using numerous worked examples, diagrams and careful physically motivated explanations this book will smooth the path towards understanding the radically different and revolutionary view of the physical world that general relativity provides and which all physicists should have the opportunity to experience.
MoreLong description:
General relativity is one of the most profound statements in science. It is a theory of gravity that allows us to model the large-scale structure of the Universe, to understand and explain the motions and workings of stars, to reveal how gravity interacts with light waves and even how it hosts its own gravitational waves.
It is central to our notions of where the Universe comes from and what its eventual fate might be. For those wishing to learn physics, general relativity enjoys a dubious distinction. It is frequently viewed as a difficult theory, whose mastery is a rite of passage into the world of advanced physics and is described in an array of unforgiving, weighty textbooks aimed firmly at aspiring professionals.
Written by experimental physicists and aimed at providing the interested amateur with a bridge from undergraduate physics to general relativity, this book is designed to be different. The imagined reader is a gifted amateur possessing a curious and adaptable mind looking to be told an entertaining and intellectually stimulating story, but who will not feel patronised if a few mathematical niceties are spelled out in detail.
Using numerous worked examples, diagrams and careful physically motivated explanations, this book will smooth the path towards understanding the radically different and revolutionary view of the physical world that general relativity provides and which all physicists should have the opportunity to experience.
Table of Contents:
Overture
I Geometry and mechanics in at spacetime
Special relativity
Vectors in at spacetime
Coordinates
Linear slot machines
The metric
II Curvature and general relativity
Finding a theory of gravitation
Parallel lines and the covariant derivative
Free fall and geodesics
Geodesic equations and connection coecients
Making measurements in relativity
Riemann curvature and the Ricci tensor
The energy-momentum tensor
The gravitational field equations
The triumphs of general relativity
III Cosmology
An introduction to cosmology
Robertson-Walker spaces
The Friedmann equations
Universes of the past and future
Causality, infinity and horizons
IV Orbits, stars and black holes
Newtonian orbits
The Schwarzschild geometry
Motion in the Schwarzschild geometry
Orbits in the Schwarzschild geometry
Photons in the Schwarzschild geometry
Black holes
Black-hole singularities
Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates
Hawking radiation
Charged and rotating black holes
V Geometry
Classical curvature
A reintroduction to geometry
Differential forms
Exterior and Lie derivatives
Geometry of the connection
Riemann curvature revisited
Cartan's method
Duality and the volume form
Forms, chains and Stokes' theorem
VI Classical and quantum fields
Fluids as dry water
Lagrangian field theory
Inflation
The electromagnetic field
Charge conservation and the Bianchi identity
Gauge fields
Weak gravitational fields
Gravitational waves
The properties of gravitons
Higher-dimensional spacetime
From classical to quantum gravity
The Big-Bang singularity
Further reading
Conventions and notation
Manifolds and bundles
Embedding
Answers to selected problems
