"General Relativity" by Wald -- question

[Felix Quintana]

I desire to read General relativity by Wald. I am a student who is self teaching, and I know tensor calculus by Pavel grinfield's introduction to tensor analysis and calculus of moving objects. The book states things from advanced calculus. Do I have more math to learn before hand?

 

[strangerep]

Well, I like the analogy that a straight line (or geodesic ) is the shortest path between 2 points. Don't take a detour if you don't have to.

So just try going directly to what you want: i.e., studying Wald. That book (as with many other GR texts) teaches a reasonable amount of the more advanced differential geometry, etc. This is good, since it happens within the GR learning context.

If you get stuck anywhere in Wald, there's plenty of people here on PF who can help you.

 

[Felix Quintana]

Thanks, I am not far off in the book, and I recognize tensor calculus just shown to me in a different notation, and more complicated way i.e Kronecker delta. It's intimidating.

 

[haushofer]

It's called index-free notation. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend Wald for an introduction.

 

[Felix Quintana]

Oh, well what book would you recommend as an introduction? If you don't mind

 

[haushofer]

I used Carroll, which is excellent. Zee's intro is also great and fun to read.

 

[vanhees71]

I love Landau/Lifshitz vol. 2. It's using the Ricci calculus (i.e., all the index gymnastics) and just provides what's really needed to concentrate on the physics of GR.

 

[Felix Quintana]

This book is amazing...Landau/Lifshitz vol 2 explains everything so clearly using the notation I'm familiar with