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General Relativity and Cosmology

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Basic Concepts in Physics

Part of the book series: Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics ((ULNP))

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Abstract

The general theory of relativity is considered to be Albert Einstein’s masterpiece in theoretical physics. In contrast with special relativity, where scientists like Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré worked in parallel, motivated by the unsolved physical problems existing at the beginning of the twentieth century (for instance, motion with respect to the æther and the negative result of the Michelson–Morley experiment), there was no such motivation for general relativity. With the exception of an anomaly in the precession of Mercury’s orbit, the Newtonian theory of gravitation did not manifest symptoms of obsolescence.

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Literature

  1. M. Chaichian, I. Merches, D. Radu, A. Tureanu, Electrodynamics. An Intensive Course (Springer, Berlin, 2016). This is a very complete book, containing theory and applications, and the theoretical background and detection of gravitational waves are reported in a clear way

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  2. L.C. Epstein, Relativity Visualized (Insight Press, San Francisco, 1985). A highly appreciated intuitive approach to special and general relativity, replacing equations with diagrams and paper models

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  3. S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, New York, 1988). A unique book, recommended to all readers

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  4. L.D. Landau, E.M. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields (Pergamon, Oxford, 1975). The principles of general relativity are presented very clearly in this book

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  5. M.S. Longair, Theoretical Concepts in Physics (Cambridge University Press, London, 1984). There is a partial overlap in the scope of several sections of our book with that of this reference. The interested reader will find it useful to supplement several sections of the present chapter

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  6. T. Regge, An Elementary Course on General Relativity (CERN, Geneva, 1985). An excellent introduction to the topic, based on lectures given by the author

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  7. E.G. Thomas, D.J. Raine, Physics to a Degree (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1998). Some of the proposed problems are adapted from those in this excellent book

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  8. S. Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology (Wiley, New York, 1972). This is a valuable book containing a large amount of information and adopting a very original approach, where the point of view of a particle physicist plays a more important role than in other books dealing with general relativity

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Correspondence to Masud Chaichian .

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Chaichian, M., Perez Rojas, H., Tureanu, A. (2021). General Relativity and Cosmology. In: Basic Concepts in Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62313-8_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62313-8_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-62312-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-62313-8

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