Flashcards: General relativity

The mathematics of general relativity refers to various mathematical structures and techniques that are used in studying and formulating Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

General relativity (GR) is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915.

The Einstein field equations (EFE; also known as "Einstein's equations") are the set of 10 equations in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity that describes the fundamental interaction of gravitation as a result of spacetime being curved by matter and energy.

In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer.

General relativity (GR, also known as the general theory of relativity or GTR) is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and the current description of gravitation in modern physics.

In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influence that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body.

In Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric (also known as the Schwarzschild vacuum or Schwarzschild solution) is the solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, on the assumption that the electric charge of the mass, angular momentum of the mass, and universal cosmological constant are all zero.

In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single interwoven continuum.

A wormhole or "Einstein-Rosen Bridge" is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in spacetime.

The ADM formalism, named for its authors Richard Arnowitt, Stanley Deser and Charles W.

Alternatives to general relativity are physical theories that attempt to describe the phenomena of gravitation in competition to Einstein's theory of general relativity.

In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: Λ) is the value of the energy density of the vacuum of space.

The shape of the universe is the and of the Universe, in terms of both curvature and topology (though, strictly speaking, the concept goes beyond both).

The world line (or worldline) of an object is the path of that object in 4-dimensional spacetime, tracing the history of its location in space at each instant in time.

In physics, relativistic angular momentum refers to the mathematical formalisms and physical concepts that define angular momentum in special relativity (SR) and general relativity (GR).

In physical cosmology, cosmological perturbation theory is the theory by which the evolution of structure is understood in the big bang model.

In the Newman–Penrose (NP) formalism of general relativity, Weyl scalars refer to a set of five complex scalars which encode the ten independent components of the Weyl tensors of a four-dimensional spacetime.

Barycentric Dynamical Time (TDB, from the French Temps Dynamique Barycentrique) is a relativistic coordinate time scale, intended for astronomical use as a time standard to take account of time dilation when calculating orbits and astronomical ephemerides of planets, asteroids, comets and interplanetary spacecraft in the Solar System.

It was customary to represent black hole horizons via stationary solutions of field equations, i.

The mathematics of general relativity are complex.

In the Newman–Penrose (NP) formalism of general relativity, independent components of the Ricci tensors of a four-dimensional spacetime are encoded into seven (or ten) Ricci scalars which consist of three real scalars , three (or six) complex scalars and the NP curvature scalar .