Differential Forms And The Geometry Of General Relativity

Differential Forms and the Geometry of General Relativity provides readers with a coherent path to understanding relativity. Requiring little more than calculus and some linear algebra, it helps readers learn just enough differential geometry to grasp the basics of general relativity.The book contains two intertwined but distinct halves. Designed f

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Carefully documenting the different formulations of general relativity, the author reveals valuable insight into the nature of the gravitational force and its interaction with matter. This book will interest graduate students and researchers in the fields of general relativity, gravitational physics and differential geometry.

Comprehensive treatment of the essentials of modern differential geometry and topology for graduate students in mathematics and the physical sciences.

This monograph describes the different formulations of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Unlike traditional treatments, Cartan's geometry of fibre bundles and differential forms is placed at the forefront, and a detailed review of the relevant differential geometry is presented. Particular emphasis is given to general relativity in 4D space-time, in which the concepts of chirality and self-duality begin to play a key role. Associated chiral formulations are catalogued, and shown to lead to many practical simplifications. The book develops the chiral gravitational perturbation theory, in which the spinor formalism plays a central role. The book also presents in detail the twistor description of gravity, as well as its generalisation based on geometry of 3-forms in seven dimensions. Giving valuable insight into the very nature of gravity, this book joins our highly prestigious Cambridge Monographs in Mathematical Physics series. It will interest graduate students and researchers in the fields of theoretical physics and differential geometry.

This monograph is the first one to systematically present a series of local and global estimates and inequalities for differential forms, in particular the ones that satisfy the A-harmonic equations. The presentation focuses on the Hardy-Littlewood, Poincare, Cacciooli, imbedded and reverse Holder inequalities. Integral estimates for operators, such as homotopy operator, the Laplace-Beltrami operator, and the gradient operator are discussed next. Additionally, some related topics such as BMO inequalities, Lipschitz classes, Orlicz spaces and inequalities in Carnot groups are discussed in the concluding chapter. An abundance of bibliographical references and historical material supplement the text throughout. This rigorous presentation requires a familiarity with topics such as differential forms, topology and Sobolev space theory. It will serve as an invaluable reference for researchers, instructors and graduate students in analysis and partial differential equations and could be used as additional material for specific courses in these fields.

An inviting, intuitive, and visual exploration of differential geometry and forms Visual Differential Geometry and Forms fulfills two principal goals. In the first four acts, Tristan Needham puts the geometry back into differential geometry. Using 235 hand-drawn diagrams, Needham deploys Newton’s geometrical methods to provide geometrical explanations of the classical results. In the fifth act, he offers the first undergraduate introduction to differential forms that treats advanced topics in an intuitive and geometrical manner. Unique features of the first four acts include: four distinct geometrical proofs of the fundamentally important Global Gauss-Bonnet theorem, providing a stunning link between local geometry and global topology; a simple, geometrical proof of Gauss’s famous Theorema Egregium; a complete geometrical treatment of the Riemann curvature tensor of an n-manifold; and a detailed geometrical treatment of Einstein’s field equation, describing gravity as curved spacetime (General Relativity), together with its implications for gravitational waves, black holes, and cosmology. The final act elucidates such topics as the unification of all the integral theorems of vector calculus; the elegant reformulation of Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism in terms of 2-forms; de Rham cohomology; differential geometry via Cartan’s method of moving frames; and the calculation of the Riemann tensor using curvature 2-forms. Six of the seven chapters of Act V can be read completely independently from the rest of the book. Requiring only basic calculus and geometry, Visual Differential Geometry and Forms provocatively rethinks the way this important area of mathematics should be considered and taught.

This volume consists of expanded versions of invited lectures given at The Beemfest: Advances in Differential Geometry and General Relativity (University of Missouri-Columbia) on the occasion of Professor John K. Beem's retirement. The articles address problems in differential geometry in general and in particular, global Lorentzian geometry, Finsler geometry, causal boundaries, Penrose's cosmic censorship hypothesis, the geometry of differential operators with variable coefficients on manifolds, and asymptotically de Sitter spacetimes satisfying Einstein's equations with positive cosmological constant. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in differential geometry.