Physics 225b, General Relativity 2017

Professor: Ken Intriligator, Mayer Hall 5234. Office hours TBD. Email: keni (at) ucsd.edu


Text: No mandatory text. I highly recommend Wald's book; it is a gem, at a bargain price.

Lecture Times :MW 11:00-12:20pm, MHA 5623

Other recommended resources: Carroll's lectures on GR, Townsend lectures on black holes, John McGreevy's old 225a lectures, Ed Witten's PiTP lecture notes , Ken's old 225a site

Homework: It is essential to do your exercises. Many of the assigned problems have solutions that can be found online -- try to resist that, it's cheating both yourself, and it is technically, officially cheating. Grade based on HW and possibly a final (TBD).

lecture# topic (and link to notes) Homework
1/9 Introduction to GR part 2          
1/11 Introduction, continued   HW 1 (due Friday Jan 20)         HW 1 solution / comments
1/18 Overview, continued          
1/23 Linearized Einstein.   HW 2 (due Jan 30)        
1/25 Gravity waves etc, cont.          
1/30 Gravity radiation cont. Symmetric spaces   HW 3 (due Feb 6)        
2/1 de Sitter, anti-de Sitter, Minkowski, and Carter-Penrose diagrams          
2/6 Killing vectors, and maximally symm cont.          
2/8 Causal structure. FRW spacetimes   HW 4 (due Feb 15)        
2/13 FRW spacetimes, cont.          
2/13 FRW. Schwarzschild.          
2/15 Schwarzschild, continued          
2/22 Schwarzschild black holes   HW 5 (Due March 1)        
2/27 Black holes cont.          
3/1 Black holes etc cont.          
3/13 Black holes etc cont.          
3/15 Kerr black holes cont.   HW 6 (due Mar 24)        
3/21 Penrose process and black hole thermodynamics          
3/22 Hawking radiation and information puzzles