Introduction To General Relativity

AY2017/2018 Semester 2

Beginning with a review of special relativity, the course covers the equivalence principle, effects of gravitation on clocks and the GPS, gravitational redshift, curved spacetime, geodesic equation and simple solutions, Schwarzschild geometry of a spherical star, equation of orbits around spherical star, experimental tests of general relativity, and the course ends with an introduction to black holes. It adopts a physics first approach and introduces the higher mathematics when needed.