Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries.
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second order partial differential equations.
The shape of the universe, in physical cosmology, is the local and global geometry of the universe. The local features of the geometry of the universe are primarily described by its curvature, whereas the topology of the universe describes general global properties of its shape as a continuous object.
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, Ricci-flatness is a condition on the curvature of a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold. Ricci-flat manifolds are a special kind of Einstein manifold. In theoretical physics, Ricci-flat Lorentzian manifolds are of fundamental interest, as they are the solutions of Einstein's field equations in vacuum with vanishing cosmological constant.
In differential geometry and mathematical physics, an Einstein manifold is a Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian differentiable manifold whose Ricci tensor is proportional to the metric. They are named after Albert Einstein because this condition is equivalent to saying that the metric is a solution of the vacuum Einstein field equations, although both the dimension and the signature of the metric can be arbitrary, thus not being restricted to Lorentzian manifolds. Einstein manifolds in four Euclidean dimensions are studied as gravitational instantons.
When studying and formulating Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, various mathematical structures and techniques are utilized. The main tools used in this geometrical theory of gravitation are tensor fields defined on a Lorentzian manifold representing spacetime. This article is a general description of the mathematics of general relativity.
Spacetime symmetries are features of spacetime that can be described as exhibiting some form of symmetry. The role of symmetry in physics is important in simplifying solutions to many problems. Spacetime symmetries are used in the study of exact solutions of Einstein's field equations of general relativity. Spacetime symmetries are distinguished from internal symmetries.
Carl Henry Brans is an American mathematical physicist best known for his research into the theoretical underpinnings of gravitation elucidated in his most widely publicized work, the Brans–Dicke theory.
In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first integrals that its motion is confined to a submanifold of much smaller dimensionality than that of its phase space.
In differential geometry and general relativity, the Bach tensor is a trace-free tensor of rank 2 which is conformally invariant in dimension n = 4. Before 1968, it was the only known conformally invariant tensor that is algebraically independent of the Weyl tensor. In abstract indices the Bach tensor is given by
The mathematics of general relativity is complex. In Newton's theories of motion, an object's length and the rate at which time passes remain constant while the object accelerates, meaning that many problems in Newtonian mechanics may be solved by algebra alone. In relativity, however, an object's length and the rate at which time passes both change appreciably as the object's speed approaches the speed of light, meaning that more variables and more complicated mathematics are required to calculate the object's motion. As a result, relativity requires the use of concepts such as vectors, tensors, pseudotensors and curvilinear coordinates.
Charles W. Misner was an American physicist and one of the authors of Gravitation. His specialties included general relativity and cosmology. His work has also provided early foundations for studies of quantum gravity and numerical relativity.
General Relativity is a graduate textbook and reference on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity written by the gravitational physicist Robert Wald.
The causal sets program is an approach to quantum gravity. Its founding principles are that spacetime is fundamentally discrete and that spacetime events are related by a partial order. This partial order has the physical meaning of the causality relations between spacetime events.
The initial value formulation of general relativity is a reformulation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity that describes a universe evolving over time.
James A. Isenberg is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon.
Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a French mathematician and physicist. She has made seminal contributions to the study of Einstein's general theory of relativity, by showing that the Einstein equations can be put into the form of an initial value problem which is well-posed. In 2015, her breakthrough paper was listed by the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of thirteen 'milestone' results in the study of general relativity, across the hundred years in which it had been studied.
In mathematics and mathematical physics, complex spacetime extends the traditional notion of spacetime described by real-valued space and time coordinates to complex-valued space and time coordinates. The notion is entirely mathematical with no physics implied, but should be seen as a tool, for instance, as exemplified by the Wick rotation.
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a maximal surface is a certain kind of submanifold of a Lorentzian manifold. Precisely, given a Lorentzian manifold (M, g), a maximal surface is a spacelike submanifold of M whose mean curvature is zero. As such, maximal surfaces in Lorentzian geometry are directly analogous to minimal surfaces in Riemannian geometry. The difference in terminology between the two settings has to do with the fact that small regions in maximal surfaces are local maximizers of the area functional, while small regions in minimal surfaces are local minimizers of the area functional.
