Knowledge acquired: basic knowledge general relativity (with reminders of special relativity)
Competence acquired: basic differential geometry techniques
Skills acquired: handling physical phenomena in the relativistic framework
Prerequisites
Calculus and vector calculus. Classical mechanics and electrodynamics. Basics of special relativity.
Teaching Methods
6 CFU
Class hours: 48
Further information
Office hours: online on Webex (access via the Moodle-Webex connection) until December 31, 2020. Afterwards, according to the University rules (to be decided yet).
Type of Assessment
Oral test
Course program
Reminders of special relativity:
Relativity principle. Minkowski spacetime. Lorentz transformations. Four-vectors and tensors. Relativistic kinematics and dynamics. Stress-energy-momentum tensor. Relativistic fluids. Covariant formulation of electromagnetism. Stress-energy-momentum tensor of matter and electromagnetic field.
General relativity:
Introduction to general relativity. Equivalence principle. Physical consequences of the equivalence principle: light bending and gravitational redshift. Experimental proofs of the equivalence principle and of its consequences. Differentiable manifolds. Vectors, tensors, metrics, differential forms, integration. Lengths and time intervals. Geodesics, covariant derivative, curvature tensor, Bianchi identities. Einstein field equations. Spherically symmetric solutions: Schwarzschild metric. Orbits in the Schwarzschild metric. Schwarzschild black holes. Experimental proofs of general relativity: light bending, advance of Mercury perihelion.