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Lecture 1
Graham Van Goffrier
October 5, 2018
1 Resources
Carroll – Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity
Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler – Gravitation
Wald – General Relativity
Zee – Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell
Hawking, Ellis – The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime
2 Special Relativity
Minkowski spacetime:
Spatial coordinates in R3 – Cartesian coordinates (x,y,z)
Line element ds2 = −dt2 + dx2 + dy 2 + dz 2
ds is the proper distance between x and dx, y and dy ...
Units such that c = 1
Usually written as
1
Timlike curves have:
ua ub ηab = −1 (3)
Proper time interval: what a clock will actually measure expressed as an integral:
Z q
dτ = ∆τ (4)
p
Symmetries, looking at (1) we see that the measure ds2 is invariant under rota-
tions in R3
Lorentz transformations involve time also, but should preserve the invariant
interval via O(3,1):
ΛT ηΛ = η (5)
This is analagous in Euclidean space to O(3):
RT δR = δ (6)
2
ub = η ba ua (10)
Lorentz transformation of a contravariant vector proceeds as follows:
In matrix notation:
γ −γv 0 0
a
−γv γ 0 0
Λb =
0
(12)
0 1 0
0 0 0 1
3 Homework
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