General Relativity and Cosmology A Primer

This book offers an excellent introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology. It is designed to serve as a self-contained text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and also to provide a basic text for PhD courses. Each of the four parts of the book, two basic and two advanced, can be used as an independent module. In the first part, the main concepts of General Relativity are presented, while the second offers an introduction to the astrophysical applications. The third part is advanced, and discusses the extensions of General Relativity; the contents represent ideal material for a short course at PhD level. The final part of the book provides an introduction to Relativistic Cosmology and its applications. Throughout the text, all mathematical calculations are explained clearly, in step by step detail. Whenever appropriate, the reader is guided to further specialized sources of information. 

Part I The foundations of General Relativity.- Part II The physical meaning of the metric.- Part III Tensor calculus.- Part IV The curvature.- Part V Gravitational field equations.- Part VI The Schwarzschild solution.- Part VII Classical tests of General Relativity.- Part VIII Spherical Hydrostatic equilibrium.- Part IX The gravitational lensing.- Part X The extensions of General Relativity.- Part XI Scalar tensor theories.- Part XII Higher Order Theories.- Part XIII Cosmology as an application of General Relativity.- Part XIV Static Cosmological Models.- Part XV The Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric .- Part XVI Cosmological equations.- Part XVII Solution of cosmological equations and main models of Universe.- Part XVIII Cosmology in Extended Theories of Gravity.- Part XIX The Expansion of the Universe.- Part XX The evolution of cosmological perturbations.- Part XXI The cosmological inflation.- Part XXII The canonical quantization of gravity .

Salvatore Capozziello is Full Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Department of Physics at the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy, where he teaches Cosmology and Physics. He is current President of the Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics (SIGRAV). He is also Honorary Professor at Tomsk State Pedagogical University (Russia) and Professor of General Relativity at the Gran Sasso Science Institute for Advanced Studies, L'Aquila, Italy. Dr. Capozziello’s research activity has focused on research topics in Cosmology, Relativistic Astrophysics, and the Physics of Gravitation in their theoretical and phenomenological aspects. The results of this research are published in more than 350 papers in international journals. Dr. Capozziello is Managing Editor of the  International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics (World Scientific). He has also served on the editorial boards of various other leading journals, including The European Physical Journal C, the Journal of Modern Physics, the Journal of Physics and Astronomy, and the International Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation.

Mariafelicia De Laurentis is Associate Professor at Tomsk State Pedagogical University, (Russia). Actually she is visiting Professor at Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe University of Frankfurt, (Germany) involved in BlackHoleCam project (https://blackholecam.org).  Dr. De Laurentis has a wide range of research interests in Physics, Cosmology, Relativistic Astrophysics, General Relativity and Alternative Theories of Gravity, and is the lead or co-author of more than 150 scientific publications. In 2008 she got the "Quality Award" at the Polytechnic of Turin for the best PhD thesis and publications. In 2012 she was awarded the SIGRAV (Italian Society of Gravitational Physics) Prize for contributions to General Relativity and Gravitational Physics. Finally in 2016, she got TUSUR Prize, for recognition of invaluablecontribution to Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radio-electronics.