Living Reviews in RelativityCurrent articles from Living Reviews in Relativity. Living Reviews in Relativity is a peer-refereed, solely online physics journal publishing invited reviews covering all areas of relativity research. Reviews are kept up to date by their authors. All reference information is collected into a searchable database. Living Reviews in Relativity is a free resource to the scientific community. Published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Potsdam,...Analogue Gravity- December 16, 2005 Analogue models of (and for) gravity have a long and distinguished history dating back to the earliest years of general relativity. In this review article we will discuss the history, aims, results, and future prospects for the various analogue models. We start the discussion by presenting a particularly simple example of an analogue model, before exploring the rich history and complex tapestry of models discussed in the literature. The last decade in particular has seen a remarkable and...http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2005-12 Loop Quantum Cosmology- December 8, 2005 Quantum gravity is expected to be necessary in order to understand situations where classical general relativity breaks down. In particular in cosmology one has to deal with initial singularities, i.e., the fact that the backward evolution of a classical space-time inevitably comes to an end after a finite amount of proper time. This presents a breakdown of the classical picture and requires an extended theory for a meaningful description. Since small length scales and high curvatures are...http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2005-11 Characteristic Evolution and Matching- December 8, 2005 I review the development of numerical evolution codes for general relativity based upon the characteristic initial value problem. Progress is traced from the early stage of 1D feasibility studies to 2D axisymmetric codes that accurately simulate the oscillations and gravitational collapse of relativistic stars and to current 3D codes that provide pieces of a binary black hole spacetime. A prime application of characteristic evolution is to compute waveforms via Cauchy-characteristic matching,...http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2005-10 |