Relativity and Cosmology: From First Principles to Interpretations provides a high-quality and highly relevant astrophysics grounding for senior undergraduate students. This comprehensive textbook emphasizes an illustrative, pedagogical approach and aims to strike a balance between the breadth and depth of the material presented, frequently tying new material relativistic mechanics and gravity to the classical mechanics and gravity with which readers are more familiar. It includes robust content and corresponding exercises, figures, and appendices on many exciting developments, including relativistic mechanics; Newtonian classical mechanics; relativistic spacetime; special relativity; general relativity; tensor calculus; cosmology; Einsteins field equations; dark matter; dark energy; and black holes. This accessible first edition delivers helpful and engaging additions to the role and importance of physics in cosmology and relativity. It is ideal for courses in physics, astrophysics, astronomy, and related subjects.
1. Introduction
2. Special Relativity
3. The Equivalence Principle
4. General Relativity
5. Einsteins Field Equations
6. The Schwarzschild Metric and Black Holes
7. Cosmological Metric and Friedmanns Equations
8. Solutions of Friedmanns Equations
9. Cosmological Constant and the Dark Universe
10. Cosmic Distances
11. Summary of the Foundations of Cosmology
12. Cosmic Inventory
13. Brief History of the Early Universe
14. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Bala Terzi is an Associate Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University. His research interests include nonlinearities in astrophysics and cosmology (evolution of the universe, dark energy and dark matter, galaxy evolution) and in accelerator physics (nonlinear Compton scattering). He has taught courses in astrophysics, cosmology, physics and mathematics for nearly a decade.