Christian G. Böhmer - Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology

Introduction to
GENERAL RELATIVITY AND COSMOLOGY

Essential Textbooks in Physics

ISSN: 2059-7630

Published

Vol. 1 Newtonian Mechanics for Undergraduates

by Vijay Tymms

Vol. 2 Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology

by Christian G. Bhmer

Essential Textbooks in Physics

Introduction to

General Relativity and Cosmology

Christian G. Bhmer

University College London, UK

Published by

World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd.

57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

Head office:5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224

USA office:27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bhmer, Christian G., author.

Title: Introduction to general relativity and cosmology / Christian G. Bhmer (University College London, UK).

Description: Covent Garden, London ; Hackensack, NJ : World Scientific, [2016] | Series: Essential textbooks in physics, ISSN 2059-7630 ; vol. 2

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023263| ISBN 9781786341174 (hc ; alk. paper) | ISBN 1786341174 (hc ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786341181 (pbk ; alk. paper) | ISBN 1786341182 (pbk ; alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: General relativity (Physics)--Textbooks. | Cosmology--Textbooks.

Classification: LCC QC173.6 .B64 2016 | DDC 530.11--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023263

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright 2017 by World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

Desk Editors: Suraj Kumar/Mary Simpson

Typeset by Stallion Press
Email:

Printed in Singapore

To Saffron, Isabelle, Lewis, Zachary, Martin and Wiera

Preface

Why another introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology? The primary motivation for this book was to present a concise yet detailed introduction to both General Relativity and Cosmology which first and foremost has the student reader in mind. When I was a student myself I very much disliked phrases like this is left as an easy exercise to the reader or the reader may quickly verify that, and I also was not keen on exercises without any solutions or just some numerical answers. If, for instance, my calculation gave 7 and the answer was 6, how is it possible for a student to judge whether the entire calculation was fundamentally wrong or whether there was a small algebraic mistake, it might have been a typo in the book after all. With this in mind, the presentation of this book is fairly explicit, hopefully without being excessively concerned with minor details. Moreover, every chapter finishes with a short section called Further reading which contains some references which would be a natural continuation for further studies.

When writing a textbook, there is always a temptation to add more material and to present detailed discussions and as many results as possible. On the other hand, students can easily feel intimidated by a tome covering the entire subject. From the students point of view what is needed is a book with just the right amount of material. So, the aim was to keep the book within a page limit of approximately 260 pages and cover the standard material taught in two 10 week courses with 3 lectures per week.