# General relativity with focus on action?

• Relativity
LCSphysicist
I am having a class of general relativity. It seems that the professor will follow an approach which consist of achieve the action, and variate it to get the equations of motion (indeed, that's how we already got the geodesic equation, the dynamics of a particle in electromagnetism, the equation of the fields itself, and the action of massless particle, etc...). Do you know any book that follows such approach? That is, a book that focus mainly on the action of the fields itself.

Gold Member
Dirac derives GR equations from the principle of action.

vanhees71
Nearly every book on GR discusses the action: Carroll, Wald, d'Inverno, etc. Which book do you use?

vanhees71
Gold Member
2022 Award
My favorite for introductory GR is Landau+Lifshitz vol. 2. He uses the action principle to derive the Einstein field equation. The Hilbert action is the most simple heuristic argument for why these equations should look as they look.

anuttarasammyak
Frimus
Introduction to General Relativity by Bambi.

Excerpt from a book description:

"Following the approach of Lev Landau and Evgenii Lifshitz, this book introduces the theory of special and general relativity with the Lagrangian formalism and the principle of least action."

I found the book quite readable and going
straight to its object.

anuttarasammyak and vanhees71