The purpose of this thesis is to study in depth the relationship between the curvature of space-time and the other geometrical objects which naturally arise in general relativity. Most of the results obtained apply to the generic case. Chapter 1 contains a discussion of certain aspects of fibre bundle theory required in later chapters which may be unfamiliar to many relativists, while chapter 2 contains preliminary material on curvature in relativity and proves a continuity property of the algebraic classification of the Weyl and energy-momentum tensors. Chapter 3 describes the generic behaviour of the Riemann, Weyl and energy-momentum tensors, and chapter 5 goes on to use this description to investigate the relationship of the Riemann tensor to the metric, conformal class and connection of space-time in the generic case. In particular it is proved that the Riemann tensor uniquely and continuously determines the connections. The information obtained in chapter 3 on the algebraic type of curvature in the general case is related in chapter 4 to the topology of the underlying manifold. In chapter 6 a topology is defined on the set of sectional curvatures of all Lorentz metrics on a given manifold. The remainder of the chapter attempts to do for the sectional curvature what was done for the Riemann tensor in chapter 5 but, because sectional curvature is more difficult to handle, the results obtained are necessarily more modest.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:384343 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Rendall, Alan D. |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/R?func=search-advanced-go&find_code1=WSN&request1=AAIU009831 |
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