Description

Introduction to General Relativity studies both the mathematical structure and physical content of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Topics include the geometric formulation of special relativity, curved spacetimes, metrics, geodesics, causal structure, gravity as spacetime curvature, the weak-field limit, geometry outside a spherical star, Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes, Robertson-Walker cosmologies, gravitational waves, an introduction to tensor calculus, Einstein’s equations, and the stress-energy tensor.

Prerequisites

None

Possible texts

• An Introduction to General Relativity: Spacetime and Geometry, Sean Carroll
• Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein’s General Relativity, James Hartle
• A First Course in General Relativity, Bernard Schutz