PHYS-427 Relativity and cosmology I

SUMMARY

The course is intended as an elementary introduction to General Relativity and its experimental tests.

CONTENT

Special Relativity (Review):

  • Events, space-time diagrams, inertial observers
  • Lorentz transformations, relativistic kinematics and dynamics
  • Energy-momentum tensor

General relativity:

  • The Equivalence principle
  • General coordinate transformations: tensors and covariance
  • Curved spacetime
  • Einstein equations.
  • Schwarzschild solution.
  • Classical tests of Einstein's theory
  • Gravitational waves