General Relativity and its Applications: Black Holes, Compact Stars and Gravitational Waves

Containing the latest, groundbreaking discoveries in the field, this text outlines the basics of Einstein's theory of gravity with a focus on its most important astrophysical consequences, including stellar structures, black holes and the physics of gravitational waves. Blending advanced topics - usually not found in introductory textbooks - with examples, pedagogical boxes, mathematical tools and practical applications of the theory, this textbook maximises learning opportunities and is ideal for master and graduate students in Physics and Astronomy.

Key features:
- Provides a self-contained and consistent treatment of the subject that does not require advanced previous knowledge of the field.
- Explores the subject with a new focus on gravitational waves and astrophysical relativity, unlike current introductory textbooks.
- Fully up-to-date, containing the latest developments and discoveries in the field.

Valeria Ferrari is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). She performed research in the fields of General Relativity, with special focus on black hole and stellar perturbations, and gravitational wave sources. She has published over 125 papers in international journals, given over 100 invited talks, in addition to coordinating international research projects, the Virgo-Ego Scientific forum, and serving as part of several journal Editorial Boards. She co-authored textbooks in Physics for undergraduate students.

Leonardo Gualtieri is Associate Professor at Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). His main research interests are gravitational theory and gravitational waves, with special focus on gravitational wave sources as probes of fundamental physics. He has published over 100 papers in international journals and given over 30 invited talks, in addition to coordinating TEONGRAV, the INFN network of Italian groups studying gravitational wave sources.

Paolo Pani is Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy) and Junior Fellow at Sapienza's School for Advanced Studies. He coordinates the DarkGRA project "Unveiling the dark universe with gravitational waves" funded by the European Research Council (ERC). He received the SIGRAV Prize and the Outstanding Referee award from the American Physics Society. He is co-author of the book "Superradiance" and of over 100 scientific publications on black-hole physics and gravitational-wave phenomenology, and their connections to fundamental physics.