Speaker: Jeremy Sakstein

Abstract:

This seminar is an interactive introduction to the Mathematica package “xAct”. xAct is a tensor manipulation package that can perform tensor calculus, derive equations of motion and even do linear perturbation theory. It is rapidly becoming a powerful tool in the theoriest’s arsenal, especially with new theories becoming increasingly complicated. In this session, I will go through a tutorial I have written and explain some of the basics with the hope of inspiring you to go away and learn the package for yourself. This software is extremely useful for anyone working in cosmology, gravitation or field theory.