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General Relativity and Cosmology

A First Encounter

  • Textbook
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Ronald J. Adler

    1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

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  • Accessible introduction for undergraduates and graduates alike
  • Concise treatment but without sacrificing rigor
  • Replete with worked examples, carefully designed exercises and online solutions

Part of the book series: Graduate Texts in Physics (GTP)

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Table of contents (20 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Special Relativity in Review

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
      Download chapter PDF

    2. A Brief Stroll in Special Relativity

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 3-12

    3. Lorentz Transformations

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 13-18

    4. The Motion of Particles

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 19-29

  3. Vectors and Tensors

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 31-32
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    2. Riemann Spaces and Tensors

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 33-57

    3. Affine Connections and Geodesics

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 59-79

    4. Tensor Analysis

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 81-92

  4. General Relativity

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93
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    2. Classical Gravity and Geometry

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 95-107

    3. Curved Space and Gravity

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 109-124

    4. Spherically Symmetric Gravitational Fields

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 125-140

    5. Black Holes and Gravitational Collapse

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 141-158

    6. Linearized General Relativity and Gravitational Waves

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 159-190

  5. Cosmology

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 191-191
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    2. The Einstein Field Equations for Cosmology

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 193-201

    3. Cosmological Preliminaries

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 203-221

    4. The Dynamical Equations of Cosmology

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 223-232

    5. Solutions for the Present Universe

      • Ronald J. Adler
      Pages 233-245
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Keywords

About this book

Gravitational physics has now become a mainstream topic in physics and physics teaching. In particular cosmology and gravitational wave physics are at the focus of a great deal of current research. Thus it is important to introduce students to General Relativity as soon as reasonable. This textbook offers a brief but comprehensive treatment accessible to advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and any physicist or mathematician interested in understanding the material in a short time. The author, an experienced teacher of the subject, has included numerous examples and exercises to help students consolidate the ideas they have learned. Solutions to the exercises are provided as supplementary material in the online chapters.




Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

    Ronald J. Adler

About the author

Ronald Adler has worked mainly in theoretical particle physics and general relativity. His experience also includes work in experimental particle physics, experimental general relativity, experiments in high temperature superconductivity, satellite and orbital launch systems, and digital image analysis. He is the co-author of a classic textbook on general relativity and has devoted over half a century to teaching physics students at a number of universities. He is also the author of many research publications, and is currently working on fundamental physics problems including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, properties of black holes and gravitational waves, the birth of the universe, and physics at the Planck scale. In his free time he enjoys mountaineering and hiking.

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