Project Report

on

MATHEMATICS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY

submitted in complete fulfilment of the requirements for the middle

term evaluation
of

Applied Mathematics

Submitted by

BHAVUK ROHILLA
2K20/A4/76

Submitted to :

Mr. Rohit Kumar

DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS

DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
(formerly Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042
JULY 2021
 DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS
DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
(FORMERLY Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042

CANDIDATE’S DECLERATION

I, (Bhavuk Rohilla,2K20/A4/76) students of B. Tech. 1st year hereby declare that the project

Dissertation titled “MATHEMATICS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY ” which is submitted by

us to the Department of Applied Mathematics, Delhi Technological University, Delhi in

partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the degree of Bachelor of Technology,

is not copied from any source without proper citation. This work has not previously formed

the basis for the award of any Degree, Diploma Associateship, Fellowship or other similar

title or recognition.

Place: Delhi Bhavuk Rohilla

(2K20/A4/76)

Date: July. 21

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 DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS
DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
(FORMERLY Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042

CERTIFICATE

I hereby certify that the project Dissertation titled “ MATHEMATICS OF GENERAL

RELATIVITY ” which is submitted by Bhavuk Rohilla,2K20/A4/76 [Chemical engineering],

Delhi Technological University, Delhi in complete fulfilment of the requirement for the

award of the degree of the Bachelor of Technology, is a record of the project work carried out

by the students under my supervision. To the best of my knowledge this work has not been

submitted in part or full for any Degree or Diploma to this University or elsewhere.

Place: Delhi Mr. Rohit Kumar

Date: CLASS TEACHER

iii
 DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS
DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
(FORMERLY Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042

ABSTRACT

iv
 DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS
DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
(FORMERLY Delhi College of Engineering)
Bawana Road, Delhi-110042

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to Mr. Rohit

Kumar who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on MATHEMATICS

OF GENERAL RELATIVITY , which also helped me in doing a lot of Research and I came to

know about so many new things I am really thankful to them and for their exemplary

guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the course of this project.

Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and friends who helped me a lot in finalizing

this project within the limited time frame.

In addition, I would like to thank Department of Applied Mathematics, Delhi Technological

University for giving us the opportunity to work on this topic.

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 CONTENTS

Title page i

Candidate’s Declaration ii

Certificate iii

Abstract iv

Acknowledgment v

Contents vi

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 MATHEMATICAL TOOLS NEED FOR GENERAL RELATIVITY

1.2 SPACE TIME AND WORLDLINES

CHAPTER 2 VECTORS AND TENSORS

2.1 VECTORS

2.1 TENSORS

2.1.1 METRIC TENSORS

2.1.2 TENSOR ALGEBRA

CHAPTER 3 DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION

3.1 GRADIENT SCALE

3.2 GRADIENT OF VECTOR

3.3 COVARIANT

3.4 CHRISTOFFEL SYMBOL

CHAPTER 4 GEODESIES

4.1 GEODESIES

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 4.2 PARALLEL TRANSPORT

CHAPTER 5 CURVATURE

5.1 RIEMANN CURVATURE

5.2 RICCI

5.3 BIANCHI IDENTITIES

5.4 EINSTEIN

CHAPTER 6 EINSTEIN EQUATION AND GENERAL RELATIVITY

CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. These theories, introduced in the early
20th century, along with quantum theory, provide the modern framework for the description
of the fundamental physical theories of gravity and electromagnetism.

Special relativity deals with physics in the absence of gravity. It requires a rethink of many
familiar concepts (such as what it means for events to be simultaneous) because of the
constancy (and finiteness) of the speed light. We will be looking at the basic physical
concepts of mass, momentum, energy and electromagnetism within this framework and their
mathematical description. No prior familiarity of Maxwell’s equations will be assumed.

General relativity is a profound generalisation of special relativity which incorporates gravity.

The mathematical description of general relativity requires the mathematical language of
differential geometry which uses the notions of metric, connection and curvature, which will
be introduced from scratch.

The earliest tests of general relativity where the observation that light is bent by massive
objects such as the sun, the precession of the perihelion of the planet Mercury, gravitational
redshifts and radar echo delays.

1.1 MATHEMATICAL TOOLS NEEDED FOR GENERAL RELATIVITY

Working with GR, particularly with the Einstein field equations, requires some understanding
of differential geometry including vectors, tensors, geodesics, and Christoffel symbols . In
this project we will discuss and develop the essential mathematics needed to describe physics
in curved spacetime.

1.2 SPACE TIME AND WORLDLINES

There are three essential ideas underlying general relativity (GR). The first is that space- time
may be described as a curved, four-dimensional mathematical structure called a pseudo-
Riemannian manifold. In brief, time and space together comprise a curved four- dimensional
non-Euclidean geometry. Consequently, the practitioner of GR must be familiar with the
fundamental geometrical properties of curved spacetime. In particular, the laws of physics
must be expressed in a form that is valid independently of any coordinate system used to
label points in spacetime.

The second essential idea underlying GR is that at every spacetime point there exist locally
inertial reference frames, corresponding to locally flat coordinates carried by freely falling
observers, in which the physics of GR is locally indistinguishable from that of special
relativity. This is Einstein’s famous strong equivalence principle and it makes general

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relativity an extension of special relativity to a curved spacetime. The third key idea is that
mass curves spacetime in a manner described by the tensor field equations of Einstein.

These three ideas are exemplified by contrasting GR with Newtonian gravity. In the
Newtonian view, gravity is a force accelerating particles through Euclidean space, while time
is absolute. From the viewpoint of GR, there is no gravitational force. Rather, in the absence
of electromagnetic and other forces, particles follow the straightest possible paths (geodesics)
through a spacetime curved by mass. Freely falling particles define locally inertial reference
frames. Time and space are not absolute but are combined into the four-dimensional manifold
called spacetime. The path of a particle in spacetime is called its (Fig. 1). The world line of a
particle must lie within its light cones.

FIG 1The world line of a particle in spacetime

CHAPTER 2 VECTORS AND TENSORS

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2.1 VECTORS

We begin with vectors. A vector is a quantity with a magnitude and a direction. This
primitive concept, familiar from undergraduate physics and mathematics, applies equally in
general relativity. An example of a vector is d⃗x, the difference vector between two
infinitesimally close points of spacetime. Vectors form a linear algebra (i.e., a vector space).
If A⃗ is a vector and a is a real number (scalar) then aA⃗ is a vector with the same direction
(or the opposite direction, if a < 0) whose length is multiplied by |a|. If A⃗ and B⃗ are vectors
then so is A⃗ + B⃗ . These results are as valid for vectors in a curved four-dimensional
spacetime as they are for vectors in three-dimensional Euclidean space

Variants and covariants and invariants

2.1 TENSORS
In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a (multilinear) relationship
between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Objects that tensors may map
between include vectors and scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors,
including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps
between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product. Tensors are
defined independent of any basis, although they are often referred to by their components in a
basis related to a particular coordinate system.

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REFERENCES