Question: Good book on relativity?

[taalGyaan]

Does anyone know a good book/website/resource on the mathematics of relativity from an undergraduate/graduate perspective?

[ajb]

I would say there is a big distinction between undergraduate and graduate level texts.

 

My suggestions are (graduate level) Wald, Carroll's lectures on the ArXiv and Nakahara (not a GR book as such, but rather on geometry and topology in physics.) Then after that, you can read Hawking and Ellis.

[Obelix]

I would say there is a big distinction between undergraduate and graduate level texts.

 

My suggestions are...Carroll's lectures on the ArXiv...

 

Could you please suggest a link for the above?

[iNow]

It might be this one:

 

http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+wald+carroll/0/1/0/all/0/1'>http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+wald+carroll/0/1/0/all/0/1

 

 

Not sure. Either way, you can search ArXiv here:

 

http://arxiv.org/

[Pete]

Could you please suggest a link for the above?

Carroll's lectures are for the advanced student and not someone who is just learning the mathematics of relativity. Its a great resource otherwise though. But not at the undergraduate level.

 

I myself have been unsatisfied with the current material that is out there. For that reason I decided to start writing my own website for this material. Its mainly to help myself learn the subject and to learn it well enough to teach others. If you'd like to take a look at it then see

 

http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/gr_ma/gr_ma.htm

 

I would love to hear your thoughts on the material and perhaps some suggestions to make it better or perhaps point out any errors that you might find.

 

Applications are found at

http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/sr/sr.htm

http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/gr/gr.htm

 

I also constructed a web page to list all the books I have

http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/ref/books.htm

See the section below which is labeled "Relativity". It lists all the relativity texts I have. I like each one.

 

The following are very mathematical

 

Gravitation, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, W.H. Freeman & Co., (1973)

Gravitation and Spacetime, Ohanian & Ruffini, WW Norton n& Co., (1994)

Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology, Tolman, Dover, (1987)

General Theory of Relativity, Dirac, Princeton Univ. Press, (1996)

A First Course in General Relativity, Schutz, Cambridge Univ. Press, (1990)

Introducing Einstein’s Relativity, D’Inverno, Oxford Univ. Press, (1992)

Basic Relativity, Mould, Springer Verlag, (1994)

A Short Course in General Relativity, Foster & Nightingale, Springer Verlag, (1994)

Relativity: Special, General and Cosmological, Rindler, Oxford Univ., Press, (2001)

 

Pete

Edited July 21, 2008 by Pete

[Obelix]

Schutz, D' Inverno, and Rindler above are very good introductory text books. Another one, quite recomendable could be:

 

L. P. Hughston and K. P. Todd: "An Introduction to General Relativity", Cambridge University Press

 

For more a more advanced study I would think (among MANY TITLES) of the following:

 

1) Hans Stephani: "Relativity", Cambridge University Press

 

2) Hobson, Efstathiou and Lasenby: "General Relativity", Cambridge University Press

 

3) Sean M. Caroll: "Spacetime Geometry", Addison Wesley

 

Finally, for a high level study, the following are indicative titles:

 

1) Robert Wald: "General Relativity", The University of Chicago Press

 

2) F. De Felice and C. J. S. Clarke: "Relativity on Curved manifolds", Cambridge University Press

 

3) Jerzy Plebanski and Andrej Krasinski: "An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology", Cambridge University Press, and of course:

 

4) S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis: "The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime", Cambridge University Press

 

There is a VAST number of books of all levevels, anyway. The above deal, more or less, with General Relativity in the overall. Nevertheless there are also books on specialized topics, e.g. Relativistic Astrophysics. Typical example is:

 

Norbert Straumann: "General Realtivity with an application to Astrophysics", Springer - Verlag

 

Many titles about Black Holes, e.g.:

 

1) Erric Poisson: "A Relativists's Toolkit", Cambridge University Press (introductory)

 

2) S. Chandrasekahr: "The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes", Oxford University Press (advanced)

 

Many books on Relativistic Cosmology too, e.g.:

 

Jayant Narlikar: "An Introduction to Cosmology", Cambridge University Press

 

Finally two monumental books that need some special comments:

 

1) Stephen Weinberg: "Gravitation and Cosmology", Wiley. This book can serve almost as anything: Introductory, intermediate even advanced level (chapters 12 and 13). It is also very usefull as an introduction (or maybe even beyond that level!) to Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology. However care must be taken on the author's "heterodox" (in his own confession!) philosophy about spacetime: In contrast with Einstein (and, for that matter, with Relativity mainstream) Weinberg attempts to move the importance of the overall analysis from Spacetime Geometry to a non geometric theory of Quantum Gravity where geometric terms, although present, are in a sense "illusions", and attempts to present Relativity as compatible with that, thanks to the Equivalence Principle. Small wonder: The book was written in 1973, a time of triumph for Quantum Field Theory (Electroweak Unification, 1968, 1969) by one of the leading figures in that triumph - and Nobel prize winner for his work!

 

2) Missner, Thorne, and Wheeler: "Gravitation", Freeman. This is, in a sense, "the book about everything on Gravitation". Yet I have always found it cumbersome to use, because of its huge size and bulk of contents...Impossible - in my view - to use as a textbook; only as a detailed "Encyclopaedia of Gravitation"!

 

...Carroll's lectures on the ArXiv ...

 

Sean Caroll's lecture notes can be found here:

 

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9712019

 

See also:

 

http://preposterousuniverse.com/grnotes/,

 

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-&p=Relativity%3eSean%20Caroll&type=,

 

and:

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+s.m.carroll&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=

Edited July 29, 2008 by Obelix
multiple post merged