Gravitation And Astrophysics

Covering all aspects of gravitation in a contemporary style, this advanced textbook is ideal for graduate students and researchers in all areas of theoretical physics. The 'Foundation' section develops the formalism in six chapters, and uses it in the next four chapters to discuss four key applications - spherical spacetimes, black holes, gravitational waves and cosmology. The six chapters in the 'Frontier' section describe cosmological perturbation theory, quantum fields in curved spacetime, and the Hamiltonian structure of general relativity, among several other advanced topics, some of which are covered in-depth for the first time in a textbook. The modular structure of the book allows different sections to be combined to suit a variety of courses. Over 200 exercises are included to test and develop the reader's understanding. There are also over 30 projects, which help readers make the transition from the book to their own original research.

With the discovery of pulsars, quasars, and galactic X-ray sources in the late 60's and early 70's, and the coincident expansion in the search for gravitational waves, rela tivistic gravity assumed an important place in the astrophysics of localized objects. Only by pushing Einstein's solar-system-tested general theory of relativity to the study of the extremes of gravitational collapse and its outcomes did it seem that one could explain these frontier astronomical phenomena. This conclusion continues to be true today. Relativistic gravity had always played the central role in cosmology. The discov ery of the cosmic background radiation in 1965, the increasing understanding of matter physics at high energies in the decades following, and the growing wealth of observations on the large scale structure meant that it was possible to make increasingly detailed mod els of the universe, both today and far in the past. This development, not accidentally, was contemporary to that for localized objects described above.

This book provides a compilation of in-depth articles and reviews on key topics within gravitation, cosmology and related issues. It is a celebratory volume dedicated to Prof. Thanu Padmanabhan ("Paddy"), the renowned relativist and cosmologist from IUCAA, India, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The authors, many of them leaders of their fields, are all colleagues, collaborators and former students of Paddy, who have worked with him over a research career spanning more than four decades. Paddy is a scientist of diverse interests, who attaches great importance to teaching. With this in mind, the aim of this compilation is to provide an accessible pedagogic introduction to, and overview of, various important topics in cosmology, gravitation and astrophysics. As such it will be an invaluable resource for scientists, graduate students and also advanced undergraduates seeking to broaden their horizons.

This book deals with the relationship between gravitation and elementary particle physics, and the implications of these subjects for astrophysics. There has, in recent years, been renewed interest in theories that connect up gravitation and particle physics, and in the astrophysical consequences of such theories. Some of these accounts involve a time-variation of the Newtonian gravitational parameter, G. In this respect, the present book may be regarded as a companion to my Cosmology and Geophysics (Hilger, Bristol, 1978). There is some overlap as regards the discussion of G-variability, but the emphasis in the present book is on astrophysics while the emphasis in the other one is on geophysics. The subject is a very broad one indeed, and in giving a review of it I have adopted a somewhat unorthodox way of presenting the material involved. The main reason for this is that a review of such a wide subject should aim at two levels: the level of the person who is interested in it, and the level of the person who is professionally engaged in research into it. To achieve such a two-level coverage, I have split the text up into two parts. The first part (Chapters 1-7) represents a relatively non-technical overview of the subject, while the second part (Chapters 8-11) represents a technical examination of the most important aspects of non-Einsteinian gravitational theory and its relation to astrophysics.

General relativity and quantum mechanics have become the two central pillars of theoretical physics. Moreover, general relativity has important applications in astrophysics and high-energy particle physics. Covering the fundamentals of the subject, Principles of Cosmology and Gravitation describes the universe as revealed by observations and presents a theoretical framework to enable important cosmological formulae to be derived and numerical calculations performed. Avoiding elaborate formal discussions, the book presents a practical approach that focuses on the general theory of relativity. It examines different evolutionary models and the gravitational effects of massive bodies. The book also includes a large number of worked examples and problems, half with solutions.

This unified treatment of electromagnetic, hadronic and gravitational radiation processes associated with relativistic outflows from compact objects is ideal for researchers interested in the transient universe. It examines relativistic outflows and radiation processes and links contemporary astronomy to gravitational-wave experiments.