PHYS 515 Spring 2023
PHYS 515 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Textbooks and extra material
This course will mainly follow Sean M. Carroll "Spacetime and Geometry" and it is a required textbook. You are strongly encouraged to take notes during the lectures as some material is drawn from other references. All required textbooks listed below are available, e.g., at UIUC's libraries or can be ordered at the Illini bookstore.
Required textbooks:
- Sean M. Carroll, "Spacetime and Geometry", Cambridge University Press, 2019
Recommended additional textbooks:
There are a large number of excellent textbooks on General Relativity, and you are encouraged to review topics of the lecture in additional material such as:(Note: the list is still not exhaustive)
- B. Schutz, "A first course in general relativity", 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (3rd edition 2022)
- C. W. Misner, K. S. Thorne and J. A. Wheeler, "Gravitation", W.H. Freeman, 1973
- S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, "The large scale structure of space-time", Cambridge University Press, 1973
- R. M. Wald, "General Relativity", University of Chicago Press, 1984
- M. Maggiore, "Gravitational Waves", Oxford University Press, 2008
- E. Poisson and C. M. Will, "Gravity", Cambridge University Press, 2014
- P. T. Chrusciel, "Elements of general relativity", Birkhäuser, 2019
Further reading
An earlier version of Sean Carroll's textbook is available as lecture notes here.
Some of the classic texts in gravitation have been digitized and you can find them here:
- Newton's papers, including his famous "Principia," digitized by Cambridge University Press
- A. Einstein's "Special and General Theory of Relativity" (1916)
You can find the original (in German) here
The ArXiv
If you wish to read about the latest developments physics, you can find open-access preprints of scientific articles on the arxiv. The most relevant category for gravitational physics is gr-qc.