February 23 – March 06, 2026
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam
Jürgen Ehlers Springschool 2026
organized by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) offers a crash course on Gravitational Physics, General Relativity, Black Holes and Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics. This course can be attended by students studying from the 5th semester Physics or Mathematics.
Registration is open until December 1, 2025.
The spring school will first introduce general relativity; we will then discuss black holes, gravitational waves, cosmology, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. We will cover in particular the recent discoveries of merging black hole and neutron star. We also give insights into current research at the institute, both related to gravitational waves and beyond.
Lectures will take place daily during the morning. In the afternoons, we provide additional lectures, exercise sessions and the opportunity for questions and discussions. There will also be the opportunity to meet research staff at the institute.
The Jürgen Ehlers Spring School takes place at the Max Planck campus in Potsdam. Potsdam is the capital of the state of Brandenburg and hosts multiple UNESCO World-Heritage Sites. It lies in close proximity to Berlin.
Information on how to get to the Max Planck campus in Potsdam can be found here.
Prerequisites
A working knowledge of introductory university physics (classical mechanics, electromagnetism), and mathematics (advanced calculus, linear algebra) will be assumed. Some prior exposure to differential geometry is desirable but not required.
Schedule
Coming soon
Course Materials
Here you’ll find all the materials to get the most out of the course – a quick abstract, some extra reading if you’d like to explore further, and the slides with the main ideas we’ll cover together.
Abstracts
Complementary Reading
Introduction to general relativity and the theory of black holes
- Bernard F. Schutz, A first course in General Relativity
- James Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein’s General Relativity
- Ray D’Inverno, James Vickers, Introducing Einstein’s Relativity: A Deeper Understanding
- Sean Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry
Gravitational waves
- Eanna Flanagan, Scott A. Hughes, S., The Basics of Gravitational Wave Theory
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005NJPh….7..204F - B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration), The basic physics of the binary black hole merger
GW150914 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01940 - B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration), Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger,
https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03837
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
Cosmology
- Weinberg, S., Cosmology
Neutron stars
- S. L. Shapiro & S. A. Teukolsky: Black Holes, White Dwarfs, and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects
- N. Glendenning: Compact Stars: Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics, and General Relativity
- P. Haensel, A. Y. Potekhin, D. G. Yakovlev: Neutron Stars 1: Equation of State and Structure
- N. Andersson: Gravitational-Wave Astronomy: Exploring the Dark Side of the Universe (neutron stars as GW sources)
- J. L. Friedman and N. Stergioulas: Rotating Relativistic Stars