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
Summer Semester 2024
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 15th, 2024, 9:15 am (in presence, with recorded lectures)
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.
The exercise will be graded; you have to pass a minimum threshold to be admitted to the final exam
For every question regarding the exercises, please contact your tutor or the Obertutor
CREDITS: 8
EXAM DATES
First exam:
INF 308 HS2 and INF 227 HS1+HS2 on Tuesday July, 23rd 2024, from 9am to 12pm.
Second exam:
INF 227 HS1+HS2 on Tuesday October, 1st 2024, from 2pm to 5pm.
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, or should be switched off. Bring an identity card.
Suggested texts:
Lecture notes
Schwarzschild metric
Mathematica notebook
Perihelion shift animation
Mathematica notebook
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.
