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.

Table of Contents:
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 Free

About the Author :
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.

Review :
Review from previous edition As Albert Einstein once emphasized, one should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. Andrew Steane follows the master's recommendation and presents a relatively easy tour through the wonderful worlds of Special and General Relativity. He guides the reader patiently and pedagogically through the fundamental concepts as well as their main applications. This book is of great value for both students and lecturers. Steane's book provides a physically oriented introduction to Special Relativity and its consequences, which does not compromise rigour in its exposition. I do not know of any other textbook on the topic covering such a breadth of topics at a detailed, but at the same time accessible and insightful level. In particular, the discussion of electromagnetism in the context of Special Relativity - where Relativity really comes into life - is excellent. The book contains an interesting and original selection of exercises which will help the dedicated reader to gain mastery in the details of the theory. Offering a uniquely broad and thorough coverage of one of the standard tools of modern physics, Andrew Steane's Relativity Made Relatively Easy is an approachable and comprehensive coverage of Einstein's most famous contribution to science. It is sure to become a favorite resource for students and researchers alike. The book truly has the potential to become a pivotal part of scholarship in physics. This lucid and thoughtful approach to taking the reader pedagogically through how Einsteinian relativity works, and how it supersedes the Newtonian construction with respect to explaining the basic principles of physical law, is comprehensive, thorough, innovative, challenging, and in many cases original. Steane's approach fills a gap in what in many university undergraduate courses has become a topic considered rather too briefly and in a rather too stereotyped manner, and which thereby has always denied physics graduates of the deeper insight into how Lorentz invariance is at the root of almost everything.