Relativistic cosmology has in recent years become one of the most exciting and active branches of current research. In conference after conference the view is expressed that cosmology today is where particle physics was forty years ago, with major discoveries just waiting to happen. Also gravitational wave detectors, presently under construction or in the testing phase, promise to open up an entirely novel field of physics.

It is to take into account such recent developments, as well as to improve the basic text, that this second edition has been undertaken. The most affected is the last part on cosmology, but there are smaller additions, corrections, and additional exercises throughout.

The books basic purpose is to make relativity come alive conceptually. Hence the emphasis on the foundations and the logical subtleties rather than on the mathematics or the detailed experiments per se. Aided by some 300 exercises, the book promotes a deep understanding and the confidence to tackle any fundamental relativistic problem.

Table of Contents

1 From absolute space and time to influenceable spacetime: an overview

I Special Relativity

2 Foundations of special relativity; The Lorentz transformation

3 Relativistic kinematics

4 Relativistic optics

5 Spacetime and four-vectors

6 Relativistic particle mechanics

7 Four-tensors; Electromagnetism in vacuum

II General Relativity

8 Curved spaces and the basic ideas of general relativity

9 Static and stationary spacetimes

10 Geodesics, curvature tensor and vacuum field equations

11 The Schwarzschild metric

12 Black holes and Kruskal space

13 An exact plane gravitational wave

14 The full field equations; de Sitter space

15 Linearized general relativity

III Cosmology

16 Cosmological spacetimes

17 Light propagation in FRW universes

18 Dynamics of FRW universes

About the Author

Professor Wolfgang Rindler

Department of Physics

The University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, TX 75083-0688

USA