The use of the algebraic programming in teaching general relativity

These lectures give a brief introduction to the Computer Algebra systems Reduce and Maple. The aim is to provide a systematic survey of most important commands and concepts. In particular, this includes a discussion of simplification schemes and the handling of simplification and substitution rules (e.g., a Lie Algebra is implemented in Reduce by means of simplification rules). Another emphasis is on the different implementations of tensor calculi and the exterior calculus ...

Einstein's general relativity is increasingly important in contemporary physics on the frontiers of both the very largest distance scales (astrophysics and cosmology) and the very smallest(elementary particle physics). This paper makes the case for a `physics first' approach to introducing general relativity to undergraduate physics majors.

These are lectures on General Theory of Relativity that were given to students of the Mathematical Faculty of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

A review of selected topics in mathematical general relativity

In this article we propose some Maple procedures, for teaching purposes, to study the basics of General Relativity (GR) and Cosmology. After presenting some features of GRTensorII, a package specially built to deal with GR, we give two examples of how one can use these procedures. In the first example we build the Schwarzschild solution of Einstein equations, while in the second one we study some simple cosmological models.

The article presents computer algebra procedures and routines applied to the study of the Dirac field on curved spacetimes. The main part of the procedures is devoted to the construction of Pauli and Dirac matrices algebra on an anholonomic orthonormal reference frame. Then these procedures are used to compute the Dirac equation on curved spacetimes in a sequence of special dedicated routines. A comparative review of such procedures obtained for two computer algebra platforms...

GRTensorJ - Books is an active interface to a small part of the computer algebra systems GRTensorII (for Maple) and GRTensorM (for Mathematica) with the specific intent of providing students of General Relativity with an advanced programmable calculator-style tool. All standard functions associated with a classical tensor approach to the subject are available thus reducing these to "elementary functions". This is not a traditional database. The database entries are spacetimes...

We provide an introduction to selected recent advances in the mathematical understanding of Einstein's theory of gravitation.

We discuss the application of computer algebra to problems commonly arising in numerical relativity, such as the derivation of 3+1-splits, manipulation of evolution equations and automatic code generation. Particular emphasis is put on working with abstract index tensor quantities as much as possible.

The aim of this work is to present a series of concrete examples which illustrate how the computer algebra system Cadabra can be used to manipulate expressions appearing in General Relativity and other gravitational theories. We highlight the way in which Cadabra's philosophy differs from other systems with related functionality. The use of various new built-in packages is discussed, and we show how such packages can also be created by end-users directly using the notebook in...