An introduction to Riemannian geometry. With applications to mechanics and relativity (Q2509838): Difference between revisions

The aim of the textbook is twofold. First, it is a concise and self-contained quick introduction to the basics of differential geometry, including differential forms, followed by the main ideas of Riemannian geometry. Second, the last two chapters are devoted to some interesting applications to geometric mechanics and relativity. The book also contains more than 330 exercises, of which around 140 are solved in the last chapter. This makes the book very suitable for self-study. The book has 467 pages and is divided in 7 chapters. Each chapter has an interesting introduction and is finished by a list of references. It is assumed that the readers have basic knowledge of linear algebra, multivariable calculus and differential equations, as well as elementary notions of topology and algebra. For their convenience, at the end of each chapter there is a summary of the main definitions and results from this background material as needed. Chapter 1 discusses the basic concepts of differential geometry, including differentiable manifolds and maps, vector fields, their flows, Lie bracket, Lie groups and Lie group actions, orientability and manifolds with boundary. Chapter 2 is devoted to differential forms, covering the standard topics such as tensors, tensor fields, wedge product, pull-back, exterior derivative, integration and Stokes theorem. Some important ideas, such as the Poincare lemma, de Rham cohomology or the Lie derivative, are discussed in the exercises. Chapter 3 initiates the study of Riemannian geometry. In particular, this chapter deals with the notions of Riemannian manifold, Riemannian volume form, affine connection, parallelism, Levi-Civita connection, geodesics and Hopf-Rinow theorem. Chapter 4 is devoted to the concept of curvature. Using the powerful method given by the Cartan structure equations, the authors prove here the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. Manifolds of constant curvature and isometric embeddings are also discussed here. Chapter 5 treats basic concepts from geometric mechanics including mechanical systems, holonomic constraints, rigid body, Lagrangian mechanics, Hamiltonian mechanics, completely integrable systems, symmetry and reductions. Finally, Chapter 6 is devoted to relativity. In particular, this chapter discusses Galileo space-time, special relativity, the Cartan connection, general relativity, the Schwarzschild solution, cosmology, causality, Hawking singularity theorem and Penrose singularity theorem. In my opinion, the book is well written and also very readable. I warmly recommend it to specialists in mathematics, physics and engineering, especially to Ph.D. students.