Gravity And Gauge Theory

A short, graduate-level synthesis of recent developments in theoretical physics, from a pioneer in the field.

Three years have passed after the First Moscow Seminar on Quantum Gravity. It is a rather long time interval for the modern theoretical physics. The talks given at the present Second Seminar which took place in October 13-15, 1981 in Moscow contain the discussion of new results obtained during this period and the problems which arose. More than one hundred Soviet scientists and a number of the foreign guests attended this Seminar, which as the previous one was held by the Nuclear Physics Department of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

For several decades since its inception, Einstein's general theory of relativity stood somewhat aloof from the rest of physics. Paradoxically, the attributes which normally boost a physical theory - namely, its perfection as a theoreti­ cal framework and the extraordinary intellectual achievement underlying i- prevented the general theory from being assimilated in the mainstream of physics. It was as if theoreticians hesitated to tamper with something that is manifestly so beautiful.

‘Gravity, a Geometrical Course’ presents general relativity (GR) in a systematic and exhaustive way, covering three aspects that are homogenized into a single texture: i) the mathematical, geometrical foundations, exposed in a self consistent contemporary formalism, ii) the main physical, astrophysical and cosmological applications, updated to the issues of contemporary research and observations, with glimpses on supergravity and superstring theory, iii) the historical development of scientific ideas underlying both the birth of general relativity and its subsequent evolution. The book is divided in two volumes.

closer in recent years, and new ideas and developments in one field are strictly connected with the new ideas and developments in the other field. Roughly speaking, many different subdisciplines of physics. seem to converge in cosmology, the study of the early evolution of the universe. The range of parameters (dimensions, temperatures, densities, etc ••• ) to be taken into account in cosmology is so vast that one is forced to use theories or experimental data of wide ranging origin.

The methods of differential geometry have been so completely merged nowadays with physical concepts that general relativity may well be considered to be a physical theory of the geometrical properties of space-time.