General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics (Theoretical and Mathematical Physics) - Softcover

Straumann, Norbert

9783540537434: General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics (Theoretical and Mathematical Physics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3540537430 ISBN 13: 9783540537434

Publisher: Springer, 1991

In 1979 I gave graduate courses at the University of Zurich and lectured in the 'Troisieme Cycle de la Suisse Romande' (a consortium offour uni� versities in the french-speaking part of Switzerland), and these lectures were the basis of the 'Springer Lecture Notes in Physics', Volume 150, published in 1981. This text appeared in German, because there have been few modern expositions of the general theory of relativity in the mother tongue of its only begetter. Soon after the book appeared, W. Thirring asked me to prepare an English edition for the 'Texts and Mono� graphs in Physics'. Fortunately E. Borie agreed to translate the original German text into English. An excellent collaboration allowed me to re� vise and add to the contents of the book. I have updated and improved the original text and have added a number of new sections, mostly on astrophysical topics. In particular, in collaboration with M. Camenzind I have included a chapter on spherical and disk accretion onto compact objects. This book divides into three parts. Part I develops the mathematical tools used in the general theory of relativity. Since I wanted to keep this part short, but reasonably self-contained, I have adopted the dry style of most modern mathematical texts. Readers who have never before been confronted with differential geometry will find the exposition too ab� stract and will miss motivations of the basic concepts and constructions.

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Synopsis:

This study edition, which concentrates on the physical content of Einstein's theory of relativity, is intended for students of physics, astrophysics and mathematics. The mathematical background of modern differential geometry is kept to a minimum and serves mainly as a reference for the reader unfamiliar with Cartan's co-ordinate-free calculus, which is used throughout the text. The author discusses the equivalence principle and the field equations together with their experimental support by recent observations. The book concludes with an analysis of modern astrophysics. It analyzes the Kerr-Newman solutions, gravitational collapse, the cooling of neutron stars, radio sources and black holes.

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