This undergraduate textbook provides a simple, concise introduction to tensor algebra and analysis, as well as special and general relativity. With a plethora of examples, explanations, and exercises, it forms a well-rounded didactic text that will be useful for any related course. The book is divided into three main parts, all based on lecture notes that have been refined for classroom teaching over the past two decades. Part I provides students with a comprehensive overview of tensors. Part II links the very introductory first part and the relatively advanced third part, demonstrating the important intermediate-level applications of tensor analysis. Part III contains an extended discussion of general relativity, and includes material useful for students interested primarily in quantum field theory and quantum gravity. Tailored to the undergraduate, this textbook offers explanations of technical material not easily found or detailed elsewhere, including an understandable description of Riemann normal coordinates and conformal transformations. Future theoretical and experimental physicists, as well as mathematicians, will thus find it a wonderful first read on the subject.

In this text which gradually develops the tools for formulating and manipulating the field equations of Continuum Mechanics, the mathematics of tensor analysis is introduced in four, well-separated stages, and the physical interpretation and application of vectors and tensors are stressed throughout. This new edition contains more exercises. In addition, the author has appended a section on Differential Geometry.

This undergraduate textbook provides a simple, concise introduction to tensor algebra and analysis, as well as special and general relativity. With a plethora of examples, explanations, and exercises, it forms a well-rounded didactic text that will be useful for any related course. The book is divided into three main parts, all based on lecture notes that have been refined for classroom teaching over the past two decades. Part I provides students with a comprehensive overview of tensors. Part II links the very introductory first part and the relatively advanced third part, demonstrating the important intermediate-level applications of tensor analysis. Part III contains an extended discussion of general relativity, and includes material useful for students interested primarily in quantum field theory and quantum gravity. Tailored to the undergraduate, this textbook offers explanations of technical material not easily found or detailed elsewhere, including an understandable description of Riemann normal coordinates and conformal transformations. Future theoretical and experimental physicists, as well as mathematicians, will thus find it a wonderful first read on the subject.

This is a book about physics, written for mathematicians. The readers we have in mind can be roughly described as those who: I. are mathematics graduate students with some knowledge of global differential geometry 2. have had the equivalent of freshman physics, and find popular accounts of astrophysics and cosmology interesting 3. appreciate mathematical elarity, but are willing to accept physical motiva tions for the mathematics in place of mathematical ones 4. are willing to spend time and effort mastering certain technical details, such as those in Section 1. 1. Each book disappoints so me readers. This one will disappoint: 1. physicists who want to use this book as a first course on differential geometry 2. mathematicians who think Lorentzian manifolds are wholly similar to Riemannian ones, or that, given a sufficiently good mathematical back ground, the essentials of a subject !ike cosmology can be learned without so me hard work on boring detaiis 3. those who believe vague philosophical arguments have more than historical and heuristic significance, that general relativity should somehow be "proved," or that axiomatization of this subject is useful 4. those who want an encyclopedic treatment (the books by Hawking-Ellis [1], Penrose [1], Weinberg [1], and Misner-Thorne-Wheeler [I] go further into the subject than we do; see also the survey article, Sachs-Wu [1]). 5. mathematicians who want to learn quantum physics or unified fieId theory (unfortunateIy, quantum physics texts all seem either to be for physicists, or merely concerned with formaI mathematics).

Comprehensive treatment of the essentials of modern differential geometry and topology for graduate students in mathematics and the physical sciences.

This book presents the science of tensors in a didactic way. The various types and ranks of tensors and the physical basis is presented. Cartesian Tensors are needed for the description of directional phenomena in many branches of physics and for the characterization the anisotropy of material properties. The first sections of the book provide an introduction to the vector and tensor algebra and analysis, with applications to physics, at undergraduate level. Second rank tensors, in particular their symmetries, are discussed in detail. Differentiation and integration of fields, including generalizations of the Stokes law and the Gauss theorem, are treated. The physics relevant for the applications in mechanics, quantum mechanics, electrodynamics and hydrodynamics is presented. The second part of the book is devoted to tensors of any rank, at graduate level. Special topics are irreducible, i.e. symmetric traceless tensors, isotropic tensors, multipole potential tensors, spin tensors, integration and spin-trace formulas, coupling of irreducible tensors, rotation of tensors. Constitutive laws for optical, elastic and viscous properties of anisotropic media are dealt with. The anisotropic media include crystals, liquid crystals and isotropic fluids, rendered anisotropic by external orienting fields. The dynamics of tensors deals with phenomena of current research. In the last section, the 3D Maxwell equations are reformulated in their 4D version, in accord with special relativity.

This textbook develops general relativity and its associated mathematics from a minimum of prerequisites, leading to a physical understanding of the theory in some depth.

Second edition of a widely-used textbook providing the first step into general relativity for undergraduate students with minimal mathematical background.

Writing a new book on the classic subject of Special Relativity, on which numerous important physicists have contributed and many books have already been written, can be like adding another epicycle to the Ptolemaic cosmology. Furthermore, it is our belief that if a book has no new elements, but simply repeats what is written in the existing literature, perhaps with a different style, then this is not enough to justify its publication. However, after having spent a number of years, both in class and research with relativity, I have come to the conclusion that there exists a place for a new book. Since it appears that somewhere along the way, mathem- ics may have obscured and prevailed to the degree that we tend to teach relativity (and I believe, theoretical physics) simply using “heavier” mathematics without the inspiration and the mastery of the classic physicists of the last century. Moreover current trends encourage the application of techniques in producing quick results and not tedious conceptual approaches resulting in long-lasting reasoning. On the other hand, physics cannot be done a ́ la carte stripped from philosophy, or, to put it in a simple but dramatic context A building is not an accumulation of stones! As a result of the above, a major aim in the writing of this book has been the distinction between the mathematics of Minkowski space and the physics of r- ativity.