Introduction to General Relativity, Black Holes, and Cosmology

by Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat

This is an open access title. It is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence. It is available to read and download as a PDF version on the Oxford Academic platform.General Relativity is a beautiful geometric theory, simple in its mathematical formulation but leading to numerous consequences with striking physical gravitational waves, black holes, cosmological models, and so on.This introductory textbook is written for mathematics students interested in physics and physics students interested in exact mathematical formulations (or for anyone with a scientific mind who is curious to know more of the world we live in), recent remarkable experimental and observational results which confirm the theory are clearly described and no specialised physics knowledge is required. The mathematical level of Part A is aimed at undergraduate students and could be the basis for acourse on General Relativity. Part B is more advanced, but still does not require sophisticated mathematics.Based on Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat's more advanced text, General Relativity and the Einstein Equations, the aim of this book is to give with precision, but as simply as possible, the foundations and main consequences of General Relativity. The first five chapters from General Relativity and the Einstein Equations have been updated with new sections and chapters on black holes, gravitational waves, singularities, and the Reissner-Nordström and interior Schwarzchild solutions.The rigour behind this book will provide readers with the perfect preparation to follow the great mathematical progress in the actual development, as well as the ability to model, the latest astrophysical and cosmological observations. The book presents basic General Relativity and provides a basis for understanding and using the fundamental theory.

Genres: Physics

299 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 20, 2014

About the author

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat was a French mathematician and physicist. She made seminal contributions to the study of general relativity, by showing that the Einstein field equations can be put into the form of an initial value problem which is well-posed. In 2015, her breakthrough paper was listed by the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of thirteen 'milestone' results in the study of general relativity, across the hundred years in which it had been studied.
Choquet-Bruhat was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences and was a Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur.