Overview
- A succinct and selfcontained treatment of general relativity and its application to compact objects, gravitational waves and cosmology
- Ideally suited for a lecture course
- Contains 140 exercises and extensive hints, permitting the student to learn the trade by himself
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Astronomy and Astrophysics Library (AAL)
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology offers a succinct and self-contained treatment of general relativity and its application to compact objects, gravitational waves and cosmology. The required mathematical concepts are introduced informally, following geometrical intuition as much as possible. The approach is theoretical, but there is ample discussion of observational aspects and of instrumental issues where appropriate.
The book includes such topical issues as the Gravity Probe B mission, interferometer detectors of gravitational waves, and the physics behind the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Written for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in (astro)physics, it is ideally suited for a lecture course and contains 140 exercises with extensive hints. The reader is assumed to be familiar with linear algebra and analysis, ordinary differential equations, special relativity, and basic thermal physics.
Reviews
From the reviews:
"The book is based on lecturers given by the author at the University of Utrecht to advanced undergraduates. This is a short and scholarly book. … For those lecturers who are already lecturing on the subject, the book would be a valuable additional text. For those who have no access to a course on relativistic astrophysics but are seriously interested in the subject, Peter Hoyng’s book would be an excellent ‘primer’." (Marek A. Abramowicz, Classical and Quantum Gravity, Issue 24, 2007)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
This book offers a succinct and self-contained treatment of general relativity and its application to neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves and cosmology, at an intermediate level. The required mathematical concepts are introduced informally, following geometrical intuition as much as possible. The approach is theoretical, but there is ample discussion of observational aspects and instrumental issues where appropriate.
Topical issues such as the Gravity Probe B mission, and the physics of interferometer detectors of gravitational waves and the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background are included. The book is written for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in (astro)physics. The reader is assumed to be familiar with linear algebra and analysis, ordinary differential equations, special relativity, and basic thermal physics, but prior knowledge of differential geometry and general relativity is not required. Containing 140 exercises with extensive hints for their solution this book is ideally suited for a lecture course.
The author is a senior scientist at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and teaches regularly at the University of Utrecht.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology
Book Subtitle: A Primer
Authors: Peter Hoyng
Series Title: Astronomy and Astrophysics Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4523-3
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-4521-9Published: 07 July 2006
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-7141-5Published: 30 November 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-4523-3Published: 10 January 2007
Series ISSN: 0941-7834
Series E-ISSN: 2196-9698
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 294
Number of Illustrations: 98 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour
Topics: Astrophysics and Astroparticles, Cosmology, Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology, Classical and Quantum Gravitation, Relativity Theory