Physics 407 Fall 2009

General Relativity

Notes:

Classroom Change

I have found us a new classroom-- Rm 31 Hebb (Physics 107 lab)
Its disadvantage is that it is a lab, so the tables will often have some equipment on them which needs to be respected. (But the writing surface should always be much larger than the postage stamp sized chair writing surfaces in Buchanan)
However it is large enough for everyone, and has great blackboard space, and is much closer to Hennings. I will have to get my exercise some other way.
The first lecture in Hebb will be Mon, Sep 14. The Fri lecture this week (Sep 11) will again be in Buchanan

Flu Reporting

The University has insitituted a flu reporting requirement. See a notice I got from the dean re this

Study Session

I will hold a "question answering" session in room 318 tonight (Fri Dec 11)at 6:00

Marker:

Doyan Wang

Midterm: Mon Nov 2

Text:

J. Hartle: Gravity. An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity

Supplimentary Reading:

Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler-- Gravitation. This is an ideosyncratic book, which covers a lot of material. Sometimes it seems that you need to know the material already to appreciate it. But even skimming through it there is a lot of fascinating stuff here. And Track 1 material should be a roughly the level of this course.
R. Wald-- General Relativity-- Probably the best book from the mathematical point of view. He gets things right. It is however an advanced book because of this.
S. Carroll-- Lecture Notes on General Relativity-- Although it has also been published as an expanded book, the online lecture notes are a good intro to GR. Again they are probably a bit above the level of this course.
There are a number of other books available as well.

Note: I send emails to the class via Bcc (blind carbon copy) so that everyone is not given everyone else's email addresses. Unfortunately some service providers see this as an indication that this is spam and dumps the mail into a junk, or spam, or other labeled folder. I do not know how to get around this as I do not want to give everyone everyone else's email, I do not want to enter all 50 separate email addresses as separate emails, but I want people to get them. Please remember to look into your junk/spam/... folder as well. If you have any suggestion, pls let me know.

Topics

Lectures:

Lecture 1-- straight lines in rectangular and polar coordinates.(expanded and typos corrected Sep 9. Typo in eqn 32 corrected Sep 24)
Lecture Notes 2-- Variational principle for straight lines generalisation.
Cosmology Lectures
Various lensing references
- Wikipedia Gravitational Lensing page
- Mass distribution from Lensing
Using the double pulsar to test General Relativity Includes one of the most incredible demonstrations of the Shapiro time delay effects
Schwartzschild metric perihelion advance, light deflection, time delay.
Collapse conditions for a star and the maximum mass for self support by a cold star.

Lecture notes from 2007

Lecture note on Vectors and metrics
Lecture notes on collapse of shell and formation of black holes
Lectures on covariant derivative and Christofel symbols
Lectures on Lie derivatives.
Linearized gravity and energy momentum tensor.[Nov 23-- correction to soln for Massive sourc]
Linearized solution to gravity wave source at origin.[Numerous misprints fixed Nov 26]
Green's Function solution for wave equation

Assignments and Solutions

The assignements and solutions are included in pdf form.They can be viewed with Acroread Acrobat Reader or if you run Linux, with gv. There have been problems with Internet Explorer mangling the files and randomly giving the "Does not start with %PDF-" error message. I have changed the pdf creator. All indications are that the problem is something within windows which beheads these files.
If downloading these files give the above errors, try:

Install Mozilla. This will also short circuit the various security holes in Internet Explorer. However there has been at least one report that this can still result in beheading.
left click on the menu bar Tools->Internet Options. On that small page click the button "Delete Files" ( which will remove the stored files it has stuck onto your computer, and will always show those instead of retrying from the web site.) Then try the link again. The problem is not consistant. A file which displays fine one day, will have trouble the next.
Right click the link and choose save target to disk. This may also not work. It seems IE can truncate random amounts of the beginning of the pdf file
Choose the ftp tag. This will download the file using ftp, and it can then be viewed with Acrobat or whatever you use to view pdf files.
If all else fails let me know and I will make available a printed version from the rack outside my office.

Assignments

Note that assignments are to be handed in on the due date. If handed in late, they will 5%/day until the solutions are posted which will usually be about 2 days after the assignements are due, after which time no marks can be given for the assignment.

If not handed in in class, put assignments into box on shelf outside my room (Not into the metal sorting rack but into the box) Inside Rm 311 Hennings)

Assignment 1 Due Sep 25 <
Assignment 2 -- Due to my not having got to the topic on time, please omit the last question on this assignment. Due Oct 9
Assignment 3 Due Oct 21 --There was a problem with the indices on Problem 4 iii and iv, which has been fixed (Oct 16)
Assignment 4 Due Oct 30
Assignment 5 Due Nov 13
Midterm Due Nov 20
Assignment 6 Due Dec 4

Solutions

Essay

The essay is due on Dec 7, and is to be roughly 10 pages ( 3000 words). Make sure that your reference your sources.