Special and General Relativity

Catalog description

Mathematical description, physical concepts, and experimental tests of special and general relativity. MATH 479 / PHYS 479 Special and General Relativity (3) This course is intended as an elective course (within the undergraduate Physics program) for Physics majors to be taken in their senior year. Intended to be cross-listed with MATH, it can also be used in support of a Mathematics minor and, in some options, within the Math program as a program elective as well. The course significantly expands upon the introduction to Special Relativity (SR) seen in PHYS 237 , including discussions of experimental tests of SR and applications to relativistic mechanics. It then introduces students to the mathematical machinery required to understand General Relativity (GR), starting with the description of curved spacetimes and geodesics. It discusses solutions to the Einstein equations and surveys the classic tests which established the validity of General Relativity. It concludes with applications of GR in such areas as black hole physics, the generation and detection of gravitational waves, other topics (such as cosmology, relativistic astrophysics, etc.).