General Relativity

September 18 - September 29

Institut Henri Poincare

Gary Gibbons (Cambridge)

No lecture notes exist

Lecture 1 SPACETIME AS A DIFFERENTIAL MANIFOLD

• Manifolds

• Tensor analysis

• Metrics

• Causal structure

• Geodesics

• Affine parametrisation

• Geodesic completeness

Lecture 2 LOCAL FRAMES

• Vielbein formalism

• Covariant derivatives of arbitrary representations of the Lorentz group

• Differential forms Cartan's structural equations

Lecture 3 SPINORS

• Dirac equation

• Rarita-Schwinger equations

Lecture 4 ACTION PRINCIPLES FOR GENERAL RELATIVITY

• First and second order formalism

• Gravity as Poincare gauge theory

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