- The student understands the fundamental ideas underlying the construction of General Relativity.
- The student understands the "classical tests" of General Relativity and their role in present day physics (e.g. gravitational lensing)
- The student acquires basic working knowledge in cosmology and the cosmological standard model.
- The student knows the basic properties of gravitational waves including their creation and detection.
- The student has a basic knowledge of black holes.
- The student has basic knowledge about how the interplay between particle physics experiments and astrophysical observations could guide us towards understanding physics beyond the standard model or the nature of dark matter.
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About 100 years after its first proposal, Einstein’s theory of general relativity is entering into a new exciting phase: astrophysical measurements have entered into a stage of precision cosmology where observations start to rule out cosmological models. Moreover, the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015 has opened a new window for exploring the physics of the early universe. The course uses a “physics first” approach laying the foundations for understanding these developments based on first principles. In this way it touches on a wealth of frontier scientific topics including curved spacetime, black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology.
Instructional Modes
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| Bachelor Physics, Natural Science or Chemistry
The student is familiar with Einstein’s equations and its most important solutions including Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology, linearized gravitational waves, and the Schwarzschild metric.
The student has a basic idea of how to solve Einstein’s equations using suitable, simplifying ansätze for the spacetime metric and the stress-energy tensor. |
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| Final written exam on the material covered in quarter 1 and quarter 2
Extra credit for successful participation in the exercises |
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