Relativity and cosmology I

SUMMARY

The course is intended as an elementary introduction to General Relativity and its experimental tests.

CONTENT

Special Relativity (Review):

• Events, space-time diagrams, inertial observers
• Lorentz transformations, relativistic kinematics and dynamics
• Energy-momentum tensor

General relativity:

• The Equivalence principle
• General coordinate transformations: tensors and covariance
• Curved spacetime
• Einstein equations.
• Schwarzschild solution.
• Classical tests of Einstein's theory
• Gravitational waves