FYTN08, General Relativity, 7.5 ECTS

Spring 2012

Schedule, literature, etc.

This page can be found at http://home.thep.lu.se/~bijnens/fytn08.

The official home page for the course is at
http://www.thep.lu.se/english/education/courses/general_relativity/.

• Introduction Meeting

  Wednesday 21 March 2012, 10.15, room NB, basement theoretical physics (K262, house K, Sölvegatan 14A). The remaining schedule can be found below

• Exercises

  • Exercises set 1 solutions set 1
  • Exercises set 2 solutions set 2
  • Exercises set 3 The effect calculated in Ex. 8.19 is under investigation right now, see http://einstein.stanford.edu/ solutions set 3
  • Exercises set 4 solutions set 4
  • Exercises set 5

• Course evaluation

  To help us improve our courses we want you to complete a course evaluation after the examination. The evaluation is fully web-based and can be found at http://eval.ced.lu.se/eval/pub/466266/default.asp. The results from earlier years can be found below

• Examination

  There are three parts:
  • Written take home exam
  • Oral exam to test understanding with a list of typical questions and which parts of the book are not included
  • Oral presentation of a special topic with a list of possible topics and references and planned schedule.
  Planned schedule:
  • Presentations: Tuesday 8/5 and Thursday 10/5
  • Take home exam: Friday 18/5-Thursday 24/5 with presentation of the results and solutions Friday 25/5. Note: changed to handout Wednesday 16/5 and due Wednesday 23/5.
  • Oral exam: Friday 25/5, Monday 28/5, Tuesday 29/5 and Wednesday 30/5

• Schedule and course contents

  The lectures are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 10.15-12.00, seminar room NB theoretical physics unless otherwise noted below. Links are to supplementary information. wx means week x in the Swedish week counting. Note that there will be lectures also after the exercises if they do not take the two hours.

  Week	Date	Content
  w12	Wednesday 21/3	Introductory meeting and special relativity
  	Friday 23/3	The geometrical view of special relativity
  w13	Monday 26/3	Vector and Tensor analysis in special relativity
  	Wednesday 28/3	Tensor analysis in special relativity and Equivalence principle
  	Friday 30/3	Curvature and manifolds
  w14	Monday 2/4	Manifolds and Tensors Optional: geodesic equation from shortest distance
  w15	Wednesday 11/4	Manifolds and Tensors, Energy-Momentum Tensor
  	Friday 13/4	Exercises and Questions
  w16	No lectures: I am away
  w17	Monday 23/4	Physics in curved space-times, Einstein Field Equations
  	Wednesday 25/4	Weak field equations, Spherically symmetric metrics
  	Friday 27/4	Exercises and Questions
  w18	Monday 30/4	Spherically symmetric solutions and stars
  	Wednesday 2/5	TIME CHANGED TO 13.15 Orbits, perihelion shift and deflection of light A java applet to play with orbits
  	Friday 4/5	Exercises and questions
  w19	Monday 7/5	Black Holes
  	Wednesday 9/5	Hawking Radiation, Gravitational Radiation
  	Friday 11/5	Exercises and Questions
  w20	Monday 14/5	Gravitational radiation
  	Wednesday 16/5	Cosmology
  	Friday 18/5	Exercises and Questions
  w21	Monday 21/5	Cosmology: advanced topics
  w21-22	Exam: Schedule see above

• Literature

  B.F. Schutz, A first course in general relativity, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88705-2. Some extra notes will be handed out for advanced topics. Note Second edition

• Possibly useful extra literature

  There are very many books on general relativity. Below is a selection that I have found useful and/or interesting.

  Somewhat higher level:
  • Sean Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity , Addison-Wesley, 2004, ISBN 0-8053-8732-3.
  • Sean Carrol: Lecture notes on general relativity, arXiv:gr-qc/9712019
  • James B. Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity, Addison Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-8053-8662-9.
  • M.P. Hobson, G.P. Efstathiou and A.N. Lasenby, General relativity: an introduction for physicists, Cambridge University Press, 2006
  Similar level:
  • John Dirk Walecka, Introduction to General Relativity, World Scientific, 2007
  Somewhat lower level:
  • Bernard Schutz, Gravity from the Ground Up : An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-5214-5506-5.
  • Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler, Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity, Addison Wesley, 2000, ISBN 0-2013-8423-X.
  The (advanced) classics:
  • Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation, W. H. Freeman & Company, 1973
  • Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity, John Wiley & Sons, 1972
  More philosopically oriented (note that this can get you confused since it also talks a lot about alternatives, so first understand the course, then read this):
  • Kevin Brown, Reflections on Relativity, MathPages, 2010, Exists also online http://mathpages.com/rr/rrtoc.htm

• Solutions to the exercises

  Use these intelligently, i.e. first do a proper attempt to solve the problem yourself.

  Solutions to a number of the exercises can be found in the appendix of the first edition of the book. A similar set of solutions for the second edition is accessible via Schutz's homepage as
  • FirstCourseGR2.Solutions.1_0.pdf
  There are many more sites with solutions, but be careful not all are correct, here are two I found
  • A detailed solution manual and guide for Schutz’s First Course in General Relativity. This also contains many additional comments on the main text. Has been growing in size over time and various versions exist on the web.
  • Solutions to Problems in General Relativity (for the first edition)
  My own solutions to the homework problems will appear in the section Exercises after the handing in date.

• Lecturer

  Johan Bijnens

• Contact

  , phone 046-2220447

• Course evaluation: earlier years

  The results from earlier years (locally or centrally stored):
  • vt06: local, central
  • vt07: local, central
  • vt08: local, central
  • vt09: Course not given as lectures
  • vt10: local, central
  • vt11: local

• Links

  The wikipedia link collection for General Relativity might be useful.

  An overview of cosmology and related results is the Universe from the WMAP collaboration.

  Some others I found nice are:

  • About black holes
  • The General Relativity Tutorial
  • http://www.einstein-online.info/elementary
  • Very basic relativity
  • Physics of the universe
  • Populärvetenskapligt om Nobelpriset i fysik 2001

  Research links: some representative examples are:

  • Professional preprint server
  • Relativity bookmarks
  • LIGO The US gravitational wave observatory
  • Living Reviews in Relativity A series of review articles on various subjects, advanced but in overview understandable with the knowledge of the course