Full Description
This book offers an excellent introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology. It is designed to serve as a self-contained text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and also to provide a basic text for PhD courses. Each of the four parts of the book, two basic and two advanced, can be used as an independent module. In the first part, the main concepts of General Relativity are presented, while the second offers an introduction to the astrophysical applications. The third part is advanced, and discusses the extensions of General Relativity; the contents represent ideal material for a short course at PhD level. The final part of the book provides an introduction to Relativistic Cosmology and its applications. Throughout the text, all mathematical calculations are explained clearly, in step by step detail. Whenever appropriate, the reader is guided to further specialized sources of information.
Contents
Part I The foundations of General Relativity.- Part II The physical meaning of the metric.- Part III Tensor calculus.- Part IV The curvature.- Part V Gravitational field equations.- Part VI The Schwarzschild solution.- Part VII Classical tests of General Relativity.- Part VIII Spherical Hydrostatic equilibrium.- Part IX The gravitational lensing.- Part X The extensions of General Relativity.- Part XI Scalar tensor theories.- Part XII Higher Order Theories.- Part XIII Cosmology as an application of General Relativity.- Part XIV Static Cosmological Models.- Part XV The Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric .- Part XVI Cosmological equations.- Part XVII Solution of cosmological equations and main models of Universe.- Part XVIII Cosmology in Extended Theories of Gravity.- Part XIX The Expansion of the Universe.- Part XX The evolution of cosmological perturbations.- Part XXI The cosmological inflation.- Part XXII The canonical quantization of gravity .
