Relativity Made Relatively Easy Volume 2 General Relativity and Cosmology

Following on from a previous volume on Special Relativity, Andrew Steane's second volume on General Relativity and Cosmology is aimed at advanced undergraduate or graduate students undertaking a physics course, and encourages them to expand their knowledge of Special Relativity. Beginning with a survey of the main ideas, the textbook goes on to give the methodological foundations to enable a working understanding of astronomy and gravitational waves (linearized approximation, differential geometry, covariant differentiation, physics in curved spacetime). It covers the generic properties of horizons and black holes, including Hawking radiation, introduces the key concepts in cosmology and gives a grounding in classical field theory, including spinors and the Dirac equation, and a Lagrangian approach to General Relativity. The textbook is designed for self-study and is aimed throughout at clarity, physical insight, and simplicity, presenting explanations and derivations in full, and providing many explicit examples.

1 - Preface
2 - Terminology and notation
3 - The elements of general relativity
4 - An introductory example: the uniform static field
5 - Life in a rotating world
6 - Linearized general relativity
7 - Slow stationary sources
8 - Gravitational waves
9 - Manifolds
10 - Vectors on manifolds
11 - The affine connection
12 - Further useful ideas
13 - Tensors
14 - Parallel transport and geodesics
15 - Physics in curved spacetime
16 - Curvature
17 - The Einstein field equation
18 - Schwarzschild-Droste solution
19 - Further spherically symmetric solutions
20 - Rotating bodies; the Kerr metric
21 - Black holes
22 - Black hole thermodynamics
23 - Cosmology
24 - Cosmological dynamics
25 - The growth of structure
26 - Observational cosmology
27 - The very early universe
28 - First steps in classical field theory
29 - Lagrangian mechanics for fields
30 - Conclusion

Andrew Steane is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. He has conducted experimental and theoretical research into the foundations of physics and has performed pioneering quantum experiments with ultra-cold atomic clouds, as well as establishing the ion trap quantum computing program at Oxford. Professor Steane discovered quantum error correction and the CSS (Calderbank Shor Steane) codes and he is a recipient of the Maxwell Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics, and the Trotter Prize of Texas A&M University. He regularly lectures on relativity and other areas of physics and has published two undergraduate physics textbooks and two books on science and religion with Oxford University Press.