Relativity and Cosmology: From First Principles to Interpretations

Relativity and Cosmology: From First Principles to Interpretations provides a high-quality and highly relevant astrophysics grounding for senior undergraduate students. This comprehensive textbook emphasizes an illustrative, pedagogical approach and aims to strike a balance between the breadth and depth of the material presented, frequently tying new material – relativistic mechanics and gravity – to the classical mechanics and gravity with which readers are more familiar. It includes robust content and corresponding exercises, figures, and appendices on many exciting developments, including relativistic mechanics; Newtonian classical mechanics; relativistic spacetime; special relativity; general relativity; tensor calculus; cosmology; Einstein’s field equations; dark matter; dark energy; and black holes.

This accessible edition delivers helpful and engaging additions to the role and importance of physics in cosmology and relativity. It is ideal for courses in physics, astrophysics, astronomy, and related subjects.

• Introduces practical, mathematical approaches for applying fundamental concepts in relativity and cosmology
• Places an emphasis on illustrative pedagogical approaches with applied examples
• Strikes a balance between the breadth and depth of the material presented, frequently tying the new material – including relativistic mechanics and gravity – to the classical mechanics and gravity with which readers may be more familiar
• Includes numerous figures, examples, illustrative problems, and appendices which provide convenient access to the important physics concepts used in the text
• Offers online support, including a full solutions manual for qualified instructors and additional programming resources (PowerPoints and Python files)

Balša Terzić is an Associate Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University. His research interests include nonlinearities in astrophysics and cosmology (evolution of the universe, dark energy and dark matter, galaxy evolution) and in accelerator physics (nonlinear Compton scattering). He has taught courses in astrophysics, cosmology, physics and mathematics for nearly a decade.