Winter 2011 Schedule
- Week 1. (January 4, 6)
Introduction/Organization.
Review of Special Relativity.
Hartle Chap. 1-5.
- Week 2. (January 11, 13)
Review of Relativistic Mechanics. Accelerated Observers.
Hartle Chap. 1-5.
- Week 3. (January 18, 20)
Gravity from Geometry of Curved Spacetime.
Hartle Chap. 6-7.
- Week 4. (January 25, 27)
Geodesics and Local Inertial Frames.
Hartle Chap. 8.
- Week 5. (February 1, 3)
The Schwarzschild Geometry.
Hartle Chap. 9.
- Week 6. (February 8, 10)
Review (Feb 8) and Midterm Exam (Feb 10, in class).
- Week 7. (February 15, 17)
Gravitational Collapse and Black Holes.
Hartle Chap. 12.
- Week 8. (February 22, 24)
Rotation, Geodetic Precession, Lense-Thirring Precession, the Kerr
Geometry.
Hartle Chap. 14-15.
- Week 9. (March 1, 3)
Rotating Black Holes, the Penrose Process, Hawking Radiation and
Black Hole Thermodynamics.
Hartle Chap. 13, Chap. 15.
- Week 10. (March 8, 10)
Black Hole Interiors and Conformal Diagrams (March 8) and Review
(March 10).
- Final Exam: Wednesday, March 16th, 7-9 PM.
Spring 2011 Schedule
- Week 1. (March 29, 31)
Review of first quarter & Overview of second quarter.
- Week 2. (April 5, 7)
Vectors, Dual Vectors, and Tensors.
Hartle Chap. 20.
- Week 3. (April 12, 14)
Covariant Derivatives and Geodesic Deviation.
Hartle Chap. 20-21.
- Week 4. (April 19, 21)
Riemann Curvature and the Field Equation in Vacuum.
Hartle Chap. 21.
- Week 5. (April 26, 28)
Energy-Momentum Tensors and the Einstein Field Equation.
Hartle Chap. 22.
- Week 6. (May 3, 5)
Big Bang Cosmology, Robertson-Walker Geometry and the Friedmann Equation.
Hartle Chap. 17-19.
- Week 7. (May 10, 12)
Introduction to Inflation and Dark Energy.
- Week 8. (May 17, 19)
Introduction to the ADM Hamiltonian Formulation of GR and Numerical Relativity.
- Week 9. (May 24, 26)
Linearized Gravity (Hartle Sec. 21.5) and Gravitational Radiation.
Hartle Chap. 23.
- Week 10. (May 31, June 2)
Relativistic Fluids and Relativistic Stars.
Hartle Chap. 24.
- Take-Home Final Exam: due Thursday, June 9.
