Lectures on general relativity
By: by Sein Htoon.
Contributors: Myanmar Academy of Arts and Science.; Burma. Paññā reʺ Vanʻ krīʺ Ṭhāna.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Instruction material -- no. 8
Publisher: Published by Journal Publication Committee, Myanmar Academy of Arts and Science
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Yangon
Language: eng
Format: Monograph:Paper
Number of pages: 80
Subjects: General relativity (Physics)
Description: This monograph is based on lectures given to PhD students of Rangoon (Yangon) University between 1994 and 2006. The readers will find the influence of Eddington's 1922 Cambridge monograph "Mathematical Theory of Relativity" regarding notation and the backbone. The rather strong influence of Dirac's classic papers on Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity that he presented in the 1958 issue of Proc Roy Soc A vol 246,333 , in the 1959 issue of Phys Rev  vol 114 , 924 and in the 1959 issue of Phys Rev Lett vol 2,368 will be apparent in Chapter III. These papers played a huge role in persuading physicists -or at least one "third world physicist" - of the physical reality of the gravitational waves and of the quantum aspect of the gravitational radiation called the graviton which as has spin 2. The material on polarization of gravitational waves is based on Dirac's treatment as expounded in his slim book on general relativity that he published in 1975. The chapter on singularities relies heavily on the work of Penrose and Hawking as described in the 1973 classic Cambridge monograph of Hawking and Ellis. For the treatment of quantum aspects of black hole evaporation we based our discussions on the 1976 Phys Rev D vol 13, 2188  paper of Hartle and Hawking and on R Wald's 1994 excellent and meticulous Chicago lectures on Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime and Black Hole Thermodynamics. The general philosophy for the choice of topics and the treatment is based on my concept of what a "third world" PhD in physics should "know" quite independently of the topic of his thesis research lasting 3 to 4 years which may in fact turn out to be interdisciplinary in nature.
Notes: At head of title: Government of the Union of Myanmar, Ministry of Education.
Table of contents: label: Preface; label: Chapter I:Elementary principles and tensor calculus; label: 1.1 Introduction
pagenum: 1; label: 1.2 The Riemann spacetime
pagenum: 5; label: 1.3 Curved space
pagenum: 6; label: 1.4 Christoffel symbols, three index symbols
pagenum: 7; label: 1.5 The principle of least action and the geodesic equation
pagenum: 9; label: 1.6  The covariant derivative
pagenum: 10; label: 1.7 Parallel displacement of a vector
pagenum: 11; label: 1.8 Geodesics
pagenum: 13; label: 1.9 Material energy tensor
pagenum: 17; label: Chapter II:The law of gravitation; label: 2.1 The Newtonian solution
pagenum: 19; label: 2.2 The Ricci tensor
pagenum: 19; label: 2.3 The Schwarzschild line element
pagenum: 20; label: 2.4 The orbital motion in general relativity
pagenum: 22; label: 2.5 The deflection of light
pagenum: 23; label: 2.6 The precessional motion of the planets
pagenum: 26; label: 2.7  Gravitational lenses
pagenum: 28; label: Chapter III: The Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity; label: 3.1  The Lagrangian density for gravitation
pagenum: 33; label: 3.2  The momentum for gravitational field
pagenum: 38; label: 3.3  The Hamiltonian of gravitational field
pagenum: 40; label: 3.4  The weak field approximation
pagenum: 44; label: 3.5  The gravitational waves
pagenum: 45; label: 3.6  The energy of the gravitational waves
pagenum: 48; label: 3.7 The polarization  of the gravitational waves
pagenum: 50; label: Chapter IV:The singularities and black holes; label: 4.1 Light dragging by massive collapsing bodies
pagenum: 58; label: 4.2 Penrose diagrams and singularities
pagenum: 59; label: 4.3 The Hawking radiation
pagenum: 64; label: 4.4 The Dirac-Lemaitre metric
pagenum: 67; label: References
pagenum: 74; label: Index
pagenum: 76