General relativity and cosmology

Abstract

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's 1915 landmark paper "Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation" in which the field equations of general relativity were correctly formulated for the first time, thus rendering general relativity a complete theory. Over the subsequent hundred years physicists and astronomers have struggled with uncovering the consequences and applications of these equations. This contribution, which was written as an introduction to six chapters dealing with the connection between general relativity and cosmology that will appear in the two-volume book "One Hundred Years of General Relativity: From Genesis and Empirical Foundations to Gravitational Waves, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity," endeavors to provide a historical overview of the connection between general relativity and cosmology, two areas whose development has been closely intertwined.

15 pages PDF, 4 figures, to appear as introductory chapter in "One Hundred Years of General Relativity: From Genesis and Empirical Foundations to Gravitational Waves, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity"

References in corpus (4)

• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• The relativistic pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1738+0333 II. The most stringent test of scalar-tensor gravity
• A Tale of Two Paradigms: the Mutual Incommensurability of LCDM and MOND
• Possible use of self-calibration to reduce systematic uncertainties in determining distance-redshift relation via gravitational radiation from merging binaries