Geometry of Spacetime and Mass in General Relativity

Shing-Tung Yau

I shall discuss the role of geometry in creating the space-time that is fundamental to the physics of general relativity. I shall also discuss fundamental concepts such as mass, linear momentum and angular momentum in general relativity. The lack of continuous symmetries in general spacetime makes it difficult to define such quantities and I shall explain how the difficulty can be overcome by the works of Brown-York, Liu-Yau, and Wang -Yau.