Course Objectives
The course, general theory of relativity, is offered as an open elective in the fourth semester of the M.Sc programme. The course is aimed to provide a basic introduction to the subject. The main objectives of this course is
i) Provide the students with an introduction to the meaning and consequence of the Equivalence principle
ii) To provide the students with a basic knowledge of manifolds, tangent spaces, cotangent spaces, vector and tensor fields
iii) To provide the students with a basic understanding of the notion of differentiating vector and general tensor fields
iv) To introduce the students to the concept of curvature of a manifold
v) To introduce the students with the notion of a metric on a manifold and induced structures
vi) To introduce the students with the idea behind Einstein’s field equation
vii) To introduce the students with the idea of expansion of the universe
viii) To introduce the students with the idea of a black-hole and it’s properties
Course outcomes
After the completion of the course, the students will have a firm background of the general theory of relativity, one of the pillars of modern theoretical physics.
i) The students will have learnt about manifolds a model of the space-time
ii) The students will have learnt about the idea of tangent spaces, cotangent spaces, vector and tensor fields on manifolds
iii) The students will have learnt about the subtle notion of differentiating vector and tensor fields
iv) The students will have learned about the precise notion of curvature of space-time manifold
v) The students will have learnt about the concept of a metric on a manifold and the induced structures
vi) The students will become familiar with Einstein’s field equation which describes how the matter affects the geometry of the space-time manifold
vii) The students will be able to explain the expansion of the universe using Einstein’s equations
viii) The students will learn about black-holes which have been intriguing physicists for a long time
ix) The mathematics learnt in this course can be applied to many other fields of Physics and Mathematics.
x) The concepts learned in this course will help the students a long way in their future research in theoretical physics
- Teacher: Tuhin Subhra Mukherjee