Department of Physics

18203 General Theory of Relativity 

Course Webpage:   https://eclass.uoa.gr/courses/PHYS262

Course Content

• Spacetime curvature, metric, and geodesics 
• Physical implications of spacetime curvature: perihelion precession of Mercury, light bending, and gravitational redshift  
• Christoffel connection, Riemann, Ricci, and Weyl tensors, and scalar curvature 
• Einstein–Hilbert action, Einstein field equations in vacuum and in the presence of matter, Newtonian limit 
• Normal coordinates and geodesic deviation (Jacobi) equations  
• Geometric symmetries of spacetime, Killing vector fields, and their application to the study and solution of the Einstein equations 
• Fundamental examples of black hole metrics: Schwarzschild and Reissner–Nordström solutions 
• Weak-field limit and gravitational waves
• Basic elements of cosmology
• Energy conditions and their role in General Relativity