In spite of its comparatively “old age” general relativity is developing again quite rapidly. Its beautiful and profound mathematical and physical structure attracts even physicists from other branches of physics. Very many of them believe that the period of separation of general relativity from the quantum physics is coming to an end. Several physicists are looking just here for the solution of some basic difficulties encountered in quantum field theories. They think that the general, and not the special, relativity ought to be used as a framework for the future theory of elementary particles. Whether or not this is so we have to record the rapidly growing interest in general relativity.
In such a period of growing interest and fast development many people need a book informing them not only about recent developments and achievements, but also about main trends, main ways of thought, and problems to be solved. The lack of such a book covering at least the period of the last few years was felt by many physicists whom we asked for their opinion. Of greatest value would be probably a comprehensive edition of many volumes reviewing in a synthetic manner our present knowledge on the subject. However, it would be rather hard to convince the physicists to write a synthetic handbook just now in the period of extensive scientific activity.
Therefore, what we present here to the reader is not a synthetic and complete review, for which the time may not be ripe enough. It is rather a comprehensive collective book comprising articles written by many physicists active in general relativity. But we hope that it will stimulate in the future, further, more synthetic and more complete reviews. The book is divided into two parts. Part I consists of 7 longer review articles presenting the actual status of such basic problems as: gravitational radiation, problem of motion, experimental tests, quantization, unified theories, cosmology, and mathematical problems of general relativity. Part II consists of 38 original contributions which present a fairly good survey of different schools of thought, different mathematical methods, and different scientific approaches to various problems of general relativity.
The idea of the edition of this book was originated m Warsaw by a group of Prof. L. Inf eld’s collaborators and students, who would like to take the opportunity to dedicate this book to him in connection with his 60th birthday. This explains also why his name does not occur on the list of contributors.
The editorial committee is very much indebted to all contributors from so many different countries for their helpful response. We were very sorry for being forced by the limited scope of the book to ask some contributors to shorten their articles. We should like to express our gratitude to the Polish Scientific Publishers and the Pergamon Press for the careful preparation of this book.
Publisher: Pergamon Press
Year: 1962
Language: English
Pages: 472
City: Oxford
PART I
Bazanski, S., The problem of motion.
Bekgmann, P. G. and Komar, A. B., Status report on the quantization of the gravitational field.
Bondi, H., Belativity and cosmology.
Ginzburg, V. L., Experimental verifications of the general theory of relativity .
Lichnerowicz, A. et Four^s-Bruhat, Y., Probldmes mathematiques en relativity.
Pirani, F. A. E., Survey of gravitational radiation theory.
Tonnelat, M. A., Les espoirs et les difficultes de la thdorie du champ unifid d’Einstein.
PART II
Anderson, J. L., Absolute change in general relativity.
Arnowitt, E. L. Deser, S. and Misner, C. W., Canonical analysis of general relativity.
Bazanski, S., The equations of motion and the action principle in general relativity.
Belinfante, F. J., Two kinds of Schrodinger equations in general relativity theory.
Bonnor, W. B., On Birkhoff’s theorem. Costa de Beauregard, Une experience macroscopique pour tester l’asymdtrie du tenseur inertial des milieux douds de spin.
DeWitt, B. S., Invariant commutators for the quantized gravitational field.
Dirac, P. A. M., Interacting gravitational and spinor fields.
Ehlers, J., Eelativistic hydrodynamics and its relation to interior solutions of the gravitational field equations.
Fock, V., Einsteinian statics in conformal space.
Gold, T., The arrow of time.
Goldberg, I., On the quantum theory of gravitation.
Goldberg, J. N., Dynamical variables and surface integrals.
Gupta, S. N., Quantum theory of gravitation.
Havas, P., General relativity and the special relativistic equations of motion of point particles.259
Hoffmann, B., On the extension of Birkhoff’s theorem to the case in which an electromagnetic field is present.
Jordan, P., Empirical confirmation of Dirac’s hypothesis of diminishing gravitation.
Jordan, P., Remarks about the Ambarzumiany conception of prestellar matter.
Klein, 0., Mach’s principle and cosmology in their relation to general relativity.
Kundt, W. and Hoffmann B., Determination of gravitational standard time.
Kundt, W., Note on the equivalence problem.
Lanczos, C., Some properties of the Riemann-Christoff el curvature tensor.
Laurent, B. E., On a generally covariant quantum theory.
Mareer, L., Locally isometric space-times.
Ozsvath, I. and Schucking, E., An anti-Mach-metric.
Papapetrou, A. and Teeder, H., Shock waves in general relativity.
Peres, A., Motion and radiation of pole particles.
Peres, A. and Rosen N., Boundary conditions in general relativity theory
Petrov, A. Z., Invariant classification of gravitational fields.
Petrov, A. Z., Gravitational field geometry as the geometry of automorphisms.
Rosen, G., Interpretation of Rainich geometry.
Sachs, R., Distance and the asymptotic behavior of waves in general relativity.
Schild, A., Conservative gravitational theories of Whitehead’s type.
Sciama, D. W., On the analogy between charge and spin in general relativity
Synge. J. L., Relativity based on chronometry.
Taub, A. H., On spherically symmetric distributions of incompressible fluids.
Trautman, A., On the propagation of information by waves.
Tulczyjew, B. and Tulczyjew, W., On multipole formalism in general relativity.
