PHYS415-06S2 (U) Semester Two 2006 (University Campus)

General Relativity

20 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 10 July 2006
End Date: Sunday, 12 November 2006
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 23 July 2006
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 8 October 2006

Description

General Relativity

This course will introduce the foundations of general relativity and Einstein's theory of gravitational interactions with applications.

Course outline:
Physical overview; special relativity (a brief overview); equivalence principle; Reimannian differential goemetry (a major chunk of the course); covariant electrodynamics - Maxwell field as a differential form; Einstein's equations; weak-field limit of G.R.; variational principle in curved spacetimes; symmetry princiles - killing vectors; sherical symmetry (Schwarzschild solution); classical tests of G.R. (deflection of light, planetary orbits etc)

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Head of Department.

Lecturer

David Wiltshire

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
5 homework problems, best 4 count 30%
Final Examination 70%

Textbooks / Resources

Useful references:

General relativity at a basic level:
B F Schutz, A first course in general relativity (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
J Foster and J D Nightingale, A short course in general relativity, 2nd ed., (Longman, London 1995)
H C Ohanian and R Ruffini, Gravitation and spacetime, 2nd ed. (W W Norton and Co., New York, 1994)
H Stephani, General relativity (Cambridge University Press, 1982)

General relativity with greater depth / more topics:
R M Wald, General relativity (University of Chicago press, 1984)
S W Hawking and G F R Ellis, The large scale structure of spacetime (Cambridge University Press, 1972)
C W Misner, K S Thorne and J A Wheeler, Gravitation (W H Freeman, San Francisco, 1973)
S Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and applications of the general theory of relativity (Wiley, New York, 1972)

Related topics:
B F Schutz, Geometrical methods of mathematical phyiscs (Cambridge University Press, 1980)
N A Doughty, Lagrangian interaction: An introduction to relativistic symmetry in electrodynamics and graviation (Addison Wesley, Sydney, 1990)

Course links

Library portal

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $728.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Physics and Astronomy .

All PHYS415 Occurrences

  • PHYS415-06S2 (U) Semester Two 2006 (University Campus)
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