Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Prerequisites
18.03 Differential Equations, 18.06 Linear Algebra, and 8.07 Electromagnetism II
Students should also be familiar with Lagrangians and action principles, Green’s functions, and numerical analysis (some homework assignments will require the numerical solution of systems of differential equations).
Course Description
This is MIT’s graduate course in general relativity. The first half of the course focuses on the foundations of general relativity and the second half on the most important applications.
Required Textbook
Carroll, Sean M. Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781108488396.
Additional texts are listed in the readings section. Copies of Prof. Hughes’s handwritten course notes are also available.
Problem Sets and Exams
There are 11 problem sets and no exams. [Note: Not available to OCW users]
Grading Policy
To achieve a passing grade, you must earn 65% or more of the possible cumulative points for problem sets 1 through 11.
