Because of the vicissitudes of history, the general theory of relativity has never been consistently explored to ascertain whether, in its realm of exact validity, it predicts phenomena which have no counterparts in the Newtonian limit, that is in the limit in which the velocity of light may be considered infinite. Thus, while recent interest in physics has concentrated on such 'frontier areas' as quantum gravity and cosmology, there has also been a quiet but steady progress in the classical domain. The five papers collected in this volume, and presented under the editorship of the famed Nobel Laureate S. Chandrasekhar, illustrate the nature of these advances. Each of them represents developments in areas both of physics and mathematics which disclose unanticipated findings that illustrate the special character of work in these areas. Astrophysicists and mathematical relativists will welcome this unique look at ongoing research.

This volume is made up of papers presented at the Conference on Classical General Relativity held at the City University, London, in December 1983. New tests, arising from space experimentation, pulsars and black holes have revitalised the study of Einstein's theory of gravitation (classical general relativity). Nineteen contributors survey recent progress and identify future avenues of research.

This invaluable book presents gravitation and gauge fields as interrelated topics with a common physical and mathematical foundation, such as gauge theory of gravitation and other fields, giving emphasis to the physicist's point of view. About half of the material is devoted to Einstein's general relativity theory, and the rest to gauge fields that naturally blend well with gravitation, including spinor formulation, classification of SU(2) gauge fields and null-tetrad formulation of the Yang-Mills field in the presence of gravitation. The text includes a useful introduction to the physical foundation of the theory of gravitation. It also provides the mathematical theory of the geometry of curved space-times needed to describe Einstein's general relativity theory.

Einstein's general theory of relativity — currently our best theory of gravity — is important not only to specialists, but to a much wider group of physicists. This short textbook on general relativity and gravitation offers students glimpses of the vast landscape of science connected to general relativity. It incorporates some of the latest research in the field. The book is aimed at readers with a broad range of interests in physics, from cosmology, to gravitational radiation, to high energy physics, to condensed matter theory. The pedagogical approach is "physics first": readers move very quickly to the calculation of observational predictions, and only return to the mathematical foundations after the physics is established. In addition to the "standard" topics covered by most introductory textbooks, it contains short introductions to more advanced topics: for instance, why field equations are second order, how to treat gravitational energy, and what is required for a Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity. A concluding chapter discusses directions for further study, from mathematical relativity, to experimental tests, to quantum gravity. This is an introductory text, but it has also been written as a jumping-off point for readers who plan to study more specialized topics.

The third volume in the bestselling physics series cracks open Einstein's special relativity and field theory Physicist Leonard Susskind and data engineer Art Friedman are back. This time, they introduce readers to Einstein's special relativity and Maxwell's classical field theory. Using their typical brand of real math, enlightening drawings, and humor, Susskind and Friedman walk us through the complexities of waves, forces, and particles by exploring special relativity and electromagnetism. It's a must-read for both devotees of the series and any armchair physicist who wants to improve their knowledge of physics' deepest truths.

This collection of papers constitutes a wide-ranging survey of recent developments in differential geometry and its interactions with other fields, especially partial differential equations and mathematical physics. This area of mathematics was the subject of a special program at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during the academic year 1979-1980; the papers in this volume were contributed by the speakers in the sequence of seminars organized by Shing-Tung Yau for this program. Both survey articles and articles presenting new results are included. The articles on differential geometry and partial differential equations include a general survey article by the editor on the relationship of the two fields and more specialized articles on topics including harmonic mappings, isoperimetric and Poincaré inequalities, metrics with specified curvature properties, the Monge-Arnpere equation, L2 harmonic forms and cohomology, manifolds of positive curvature, isometric embedding, and Kraumlhler manifolds and metrics. The articles on differential geometry and mathematical physics cover such topics as renormalization, instantons, gauge fields and the Yang-Mills equation, nonlinear evolution equations, incompleteness of space-times, black holes, and quantum gravity. A feature of special interest is the inclusion of a list of more than one hundred unsolved research problems compiled by the editor with comments and bibliographical information.