P415 General Relativity & Cosmology
Office: Elliott 118
Office hours: Mondays 2:30-3:30pm
Email: aritz@uvic.ca
Lectures: 1:00-2:30pm, Mon & Thurs in CLE A225
This is a 4th year course introducing Einstein's general relativistic theory of gravity, and covering the following broad areas:
- Special relativity and spacetime
- Equivalence principle and gravity as geometry
- Curved spacetime geometry, geodesics, curvature
- Einstein's equations, the Schwarzschild geometry, and solar system tests
- Applications: Black Holes, Gravitational waves, Cosmology
See the course syllabus for further details.
This is a 4th year course on general relativity, and (time permitting) will cover the following topics. The chapter references refer to the text by Hartle.
|
The (optional) course text is:
There are of course many (many!) other texts which introduce general relativity. Most follow a slightly more mathematical route than Hartle. Some good course texts which are at a similar or somewhat higher level than this course include:
For more advanced material (generally well above the level of this course), standard references are:
|
Further online material for the course, including:
|
The course will be assessed according to the following three components:
There will be 5 or 6 assignments during the semester, and you will generally have between ~1.5 weeks to complete each of them. Assignments form an integral part of the course, used to expand on the material in the lectures in various ways. Investing time in them is critical for understanding the novel concepts involved in the theory of general relativisty, and a key to success in this course.
If the application of this scheme would result in grades deemed by the instructor to be inconsistent with the University's grading descriptions (which can also be found on p.64 of the current University Calendar), percentages will be assigned which are consistent with them. NB: Use of calculators in exams (NB: not really required for this course) On all examinations the only acceptable calculator is the Sharp EL-510R. This calculator can be bought in the Bookstore for about $10. DO NOT bring any other calculator to the examinations. |
After completing the course, you will:
- have detailed knowledge of how special relativity imposes a causal structure on events in space and time, and the associated Minkowski spacetime geometry.
- be able to explain how the equivalence principle leads to a geometric description of gravity, in the form of Einstein's general theory of gravity.
- have detailed knowledge of how space and time are curved around spherically symmetric mass distributions, you can solve practical orbit and trajectory problems in such spacetime geometries, and you know the basic properties of Schwarzschild black holes.
- have acquired basic knowledge of the cosmological concordance model, and how it is based on Einstein's theory of gravity.
- be able to communicate basic principles and complex topics in GR in a clear and pedagogical way.