The Special Theory of Relativity: A Mathematical Approach

This textbook expounds the major topics in the special theory of relativity. It provides a detailed examination of the mathematical foundation of the special theory of relativity, relativistic mass, relativistic mechanics, and relativistic electrodynamics. As well as covariant formulation of relativistic mechanics and electrodynamics, the text discusses the relativistic effect on photons. A new chapter on electromagnetic waves as well as several new problems and examples have been included in the second edition of the book. Using the mathematical approach, the text offers graduate students a clear, concise view of the special theory of relativity. Organized into 15 chapters and two appendices, the content is presented in a logical order, and every topic has been dealt with in a simple and lucid manner. To aid understanding of the subject, the text provides numerous relevant worked-out examples in every chapter. The mathematical approach of the text helps students in their independent study and motivates them to research the topic further.

Farook Rahaman, (FRAS) is Professor at the Department of Mathematics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. With over 21 years of experience in teaching and working in various fields of application of relativity, his area of research interests are topological defects, compact stars, wormholes, gravastars, galactic dark matter, and cosmology. He has supervised more than 28 PhD scholars and has more than 300 research papers published in renowned international journals. Professor Rahaman has been elected as Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS), London, UK, in 2019, as well as he has been selected for the TWAS UNESCO Associateship, Trieste, Italy, from 2011-2014. Further, he has also been selected for Associate of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India, and Associate of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, India, in 2009. He has been offered the UGC Post-Doctoral Research award by the Government of India in 2010. He has been included to the top 2-percent scientists, 2020 and 2021, in the research field nuclear and particle physics prepared by Stanford University, USA. He is author/coauthor of three books with several publishers: Finsler Geometry of Hadrons and Lyra Geometry: Cosmological Aspects, General Theory of Relativity: A Mathematical Approach, and Special Theory of Relativity: A Mathematical Approach (Springer).