Essays in General Relativity

Essays in General Relativity: A Festschrift for Abraham Taub is collection of essays to honor Professor Abraham H. Taub on the occasion of his retirement from the mathematics faculty of the University of California at Berkeley. Relativistic hydrodynamics has always been a subject dear to Taub''s heart. In fact, many basic results on special relativistic fluid flows are due to him, and he has been a major contributor to the study of fluid flows near shocks. The book contains 16 chapters and begins with a discussion of a geometrical approach to general relativity. This is followed by separate chapters that examine the topology of the space-time manifold representing a stellar model; the notion of an ""external return"" in the context of general relativity; and the standard two-surface integral formulation of gravitational energy and momentum. Subsequent chapters deal with tidal forces in a highly asymmetric Taub universe; derivation of theoretical upper limits on the strengths of the gravitational waves that bathe the Earth; and a new formulation of Lagrangian general relativistic hydrodynamics.