WS23 General Relativity and Cosmology

The lecture is aimed at master students with an interest in theoretical physics. It is an important preparation for a master thesis in theoretical particle physics. 

News

• The first lecture will be on 16.10.23 in HS2 at 8:30.

Syllabus

• Lightning review of Special Relativity (see prerequisites).

• Geodesics in space-time

• Manifolds, tangent spaces, tensors, and Riemannian geometry

• Einstein Equations

• Weak Gravity and Gravitational Waves

• Stars, stellar remnants, and Black Holes (plus wormholes and other solutions)

• Cosmology

• Early universe and inflation

Lectures

Monday 8:30-10:00 (HS 2)
Wednesday 10:15-12  (HS 2)

Exercise groups

The exercises will start in the second week of the semester. More information about the location and registration will be available on moodle.

Prerequisites:

Relativity chapter in Relativity, Particles, Fields (Latex script.pdf). We have also discussed (quantum-)gravity in the advanced QFT lecture, which is not a pre-requisite but maybe a post-requisite. 

Literature:

Steven Weinberg - "Gravitation and Cosmology" (1972) and "Cosmology" (2007)
Sean Carroll - "Spacetime and Geometry"
Bob Wald - "General Relativity"
Misner/Thorne/Wheeler - "Gravitation"
Antony Zee - "Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell" (a very big nutshell...)
Landau/Lifschitz - "Classical Field Theory"
Bernard Schutz - "A first course in general relativity"

Lecture Notes

The script, together with the lecture videos, can be found on Moodle.

Exercise Sheet

Exercise bonus: in order to obtain the +0.3 bonus (applicable to the first exam attempt and only to passing grades), you will need to regularly attend the tutorials, present/discuss the solution of at least one exercise, and hand in solutions for at least 50% of the total number of exercises.

You can find all the sheets on the Moodle page. Please submit your solutions on Moodle.