Prof. Dr. Luca Amendola
Tel: +49-6221-549-407 -- Fax: +49-6221-549-333 Sprechstunde:
After my lectures |
General Relativity
coordinates: Monday and Wednesday at 9:15-11:00 am in INF 308 / HS 2
Summer Semester 2018
The course is an introduction to General Relativity. Suggested prerequisites: Classical Mechanics; Electromagnetism (including Special Relativity, although we will review it in the first lectures).Program
- Special Relativity
- Vectors and tensors
- Manifolds
- The Energy Momentum tensor
- Curvature
- Equations of GR
- Gravitational Waves
- Schwarzschild solution and its generalizations
- Cosmology
NOTE: Course begins on April 16th, 2018, 9:15 am
Exercise classes start from the week after the beginning of the course, at various locations/times.
The problem sheets will be distributed during the course; normally, new problem sheets will be posted on Monday every week here:
exercise sheets
Please hand them in by the subsequent Monday during the lecture; if you miss the lecture, please contact the tutor to hand them in during the day, but not later (unless you have a medical certificate).
For every question regarding the exercises, please contact your tutor or the Obertutor, Dr. Guillem Domenech.
Calendar (9:15-11:00 am):
16.04
18.04
23.04
25.04
30.04
02.05
07.05
09.05
14.05
16.05
21.05
23.05
28.05
30.06
04.06
06.06
11.06
13.06
18.06
20.06
25.06
27.06
02.07
04.07
09.07
11.07
16.07
18.07
CREDITS: 8
EXAM DATES
First exam:
INF 308 HS1 and INF 227 HS2 on Thursday July, 27th 2018, from 1pm to 4pm.
You are allowed to bring a single A4 sheet with all the handwritten equations you can fit in on both sides and a pocket calculator without internet connection. No other material (books, computers, tablets, cellphones, copybooks) is allowed. Bring an identity card.
Second exam (you are admitted only if you fail or don't show up at the first exam) :
INF 227 HS1 on Saturday October 6th, 2018 from 9:00am to 12:00pm.
Same rules as for the first exam.
Suggested texts:
Lecture notes
I follow the lecture notes quite closely, typically 4-5 pages per lecture, so if you miss a lecture
you can easily catch up. My lecture notes follow the content of Schutz' textbook.
B. Schutz, A First Course in
General Relativity, Cambridge University Press, Second Edition (the first
one is fine as well)
Very clear and concise, with all the important derivations
detailed out step-by-step.
S. Carroll, Spacetime and geometry, An Introduction to General
Relativity, Addison-Wesley (a shorter version of the book is available for
free here.)
This book contains lots of additional material. It
is very well written, with many figures and several appendices exploring
advanced material. I will use it mostly for some applications of
Einstein equations and for exercises.
M. Maggiore, Gravitational Waves, Vol. I, Oxford University Press
Focus on GW, of course, but also with important insights on the
field-theoretical structure of GR; see in particular the first two chapters; requires some introductory
knowledge of GR.
Lecture notes by Prof. Bartelmann
