Relativity - Table of contents

This is a table of contents for my notes on relativity. The posts are arranged in an order that might be found in a textbook.

A note on the index notation used in posts on relativity. In many of my posts, I was lazy and used Roman rather than Greek letters for tensor indices, as they are easier to type in Latex. The convention in most textbooks on relativity is to use Greek indices for the four components of spacetime, and Roman indices when referring only to spatial coordinates. Apologies for this, but it would be far too much work to go through all the posts and convert everything to Greek letters. In most cases, there shouldn't be any confusion, as in almost all posts, we're talking about the four dimensions of spacetime.

The conventions for distinguishing between 4-vectors (with four spacetime components) and 3-vectors (in regular 3-d space) vary from one book to another, and I usually use the convention that was used in the book that was my primary source for a post. Moore represents 4-vectors by boldface font, which is usually reserved for 3-vectors in other texts. Schutz uses ordinary font for 4-vectors and a little arrow over the letter for 3-vectors. Always check the conventions for whatever book you're using.

Special relativity

Fundamentals

Tensors and one-forms

Metric tensor

Electromagnetism in special relativity

Derivatives of tensors

Geodesics

Schwarzschild metric

Particle orbits in curved spacetime

Perihelion shift in planetary orbits

Embedding 2-d curved space in 3-d flat space

Photons in general relativity

Deflection of light by a mass in general relativity

Event horizon

Alternative coordinate systems

Black hole thermodynamics

Riemann curvature tensor

Stress-energy tensor

Einstein equation

Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein equation