Special Seminar on Computer Algebra Sponsored by the Gravity and String Theory Groups

GRTensor is now a mature and widely used tool for performing abstract calculations in the general area of differential geometry. The package, which runs under Maple and Mathematica, contains a library of standard definitions of a large number of commonly used curvature tensors, as well as the Newman-Penrose formalism. The standard object libraries are easily expandable by a facility for defining new tensors. Calculations can be carried out in spaces of arbitrary dimension (for example, an explicit global covering of the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black holes in all dimensions D>4 will be given) and in multiple spacetimes simultaneously. Live demonstrations will include some recent developments on interactive databases of exact solutions (applied to both research and teaching) and the problem of visualization associated with the study of spacetime invariants (for example the evolution of differential invariants in the Kerr spacetime).