Professor		Teaching assistants
Kip Thorne  152 West Bridge  extension: 4598  email: kip@tapir Lectures: 1:00 - 2:30 PM Monday, Wednesday 269 Lauritsen		Adrienne Erickcek  123 Bridge Annex extension: 4519 email: erickcek@tapir   Office hour: 7:15-8:15pm Tuesdays in 123 or 124 Bridge Arthur Lipstein 410 Downs extension: 6680 email: arthur@theory Office hour: 7:15-8:15pm Tuesdays in 425 Downs All email addresses end in .caltech.edu

Information relevant to Ph236a:

This area of the website is available only to the class because of copyright issues. When you link to the readings page, you will be prompted for a username and password. If you have problems accessing this page email the TAs.
• Click here to access the password protected page.

• Course Description, Rules, Outline and Questionaire
Course Description and Rules (version 1: Oct. 1, 2007)
Course Outline (version 1: Oct. 1, 2007)
Course Outline (version 2: Dec. 9, 2007)
Questionaire Please fill out and give to Kip
• Week 1 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 1 (due Wednesday October 10, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 1 Solutions
• Week 2 (office hour: Adrienne)
• Assignment 2 (due Wednesday October 17, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 2 Solutions
• Week 3 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 3, Assignment 3 including supplementary reading list (due Wednesday October 25, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 3 Solutions
• Week 4 (office hour: Adrienne)
• Assignment 4 Assignment 4 - Points Revised (due Wednesday October 31, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 4 Solutions
• Week 5 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 5 (due Wednesday November 7, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 5 Solutions
• Week 6 (office hour: Adrienne)
• Assignment 6 Assignment 6 - Referencess Added (due Wednesday November 14, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 6 Solutions, Assignment 6 Solutions - Extended Solution to Problem 4b
• Week 7 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 7 (due Wednesday November 21, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 7 Solutions
• Week 8 (office hour: Adrienne)
• Assignment 8 (due Wednesday November 28, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 8 Solutions -- Corrected Solution to Problem 4b
• Week 9 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 9 (due Wednesday December 5, 2007 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 9 Solutions
• Kip's Notes Summarizing Multipolar Expansions
• Week 10 (office hour: Adrienne)
• Assignment 10; Assignment 10 Revision 1 Assignment 10 Revision 2 (due Wednesday December 12, 2007 by 1PM: Please put your solutions in Adrienne Erickcek's mailbox in Bridge Annex)
• Assignment 10 Solutions
• Kip's Notes Summarizing the Landau-Lifshitz Formulation of General Relativity as a Nonlinear Field Theory in Flat Spacetime
• Week 20 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 20 (due Wednesday April 9, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 20 Solutions
• Week 21 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 21 (due Wednesday April 16, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 21 Solutions
• Week 22 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 22 (due Wednesday April 23, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 22 Solutions
• Solution for Problem 6
• Week 23 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 23 (due Wednesday April 30, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 23 Solutions
• Week 24 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 24 (due Wednesday May 7, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 24 Solutions
• Solution for Problem 6
• Week 25 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 25 (due Wednesday May 14, 2008 at the beginning of class)
• Assignment 25 Solutions
• Solution for Problem 6/7
• Week 26 (office hour: Arthur)
• Assignment 26 (due Wednesday May 21, 2008 at the beginning of class)

Tensor Manipulation Software

• A short sample Maple calculation in the de Sitter spacetime has been written by Rob Owen. If you're not familiar with Maple or Mathematica yet, this can be sort of a nitty-gritty introduction.
PDF, Maple Source
• If you're interested in doing calculations in Mathematica, a very good resource is Jim Hartle's new book Gravity: an Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity . The book was written in the post-mathematica age, and notebook files are included to produce such things as Christoffel symbols, curvature tensor components and such. Some are even included in the companion website.
• A list of software packages for symbolic differential geometry and tensor algebra calculations can be found by clicking on the links button here.
• A link to the Ph236 homepage for 1995-1996 (includes some possibly useful information about setting up and using various tensor manipulation software packages at ITS and in Wonderland. WARNING: some of this may be severely out of date.)
• Current information about using GRTensorII in Wonderland.
• Instructions on installing and using GRTensorII on your ITS account.

Other links

• TAPIR, the Caltech Theoretical Astrophysics and Relativity Group.
• No self-respecting web page for a course on general relativity at Caltech would be complete without the obligatory link to LIGO.
• The gr-qc eprint archive at Los Alamos contains recent papers on general relativity and cosmology.
• If you're in the mood to kill some time, but want something more interesting than computer solitaire, you might dig the Purdue University Math Problem of the Week.