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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our
guide Mr. Avneesh Sharma who encouraged me with her
critical and constructive suggestions in the project work.
I am also thankful to my FRIENDS for their invaluable
guidance in this project. They benefited me with their
experience and skills in the project.
I again thank all the people who helped me in my
project for their support and encouragement.
St
udent sign
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general the result is not just an offsetting of the x coordinates; lengths and times
are distorted as well.
CONTENTS:
• 1 Lorentz transformation for frames in standard configuration
o 1.1 Matrix form
o 1.2 Rapidity
o 1.3 Hyperbolic trigonometric expressions
o 1.4 Hyperbolic rotation of coordinates
•
• 2 General boosts
•
• 3 Spacetime interval
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• 4 Special relativity
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• 5 The correspondence principle
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• 6 History
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• 7 Derivation
7.1 Coordinate transformations as a group
7.1.1 Transformation matrices consistent with group
axioms
7.1.2 Galilean transformations
7.1.3 Lorentz transformations
o 7.2 From physical principles
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We are forced to accept the conclusion, however, that the velocity of light
changes as a result of a change in velocity and that this change in
velocity is concealed by a change in the size of the units of measurement
for velocity (length/time) making it appear that the velocity of light is the
same in both reference frames. In terms of unchanging units of
measurement, the velocity of light does differ between reference frames
which differ in velocity, it only appears to be unchanged when it is
measured within each reference frame. It may be stated, therefore, that
Special Relativity requires that the velocity of light be a "constant" but
cannot be constant between reference frames having a relative velocity.
This conclusion is consistent with the Lorentz Transformation Aether
Theory which asserts that our velocity with respect to the Aether is
indeterminate.
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Views of spacetime along the world line of a rapidly accelerating observer moving
in a 1-dimensional (straight line) "universe". The vertical direction indicates time,
while the horizontal indicates distance, the dashed line is the spacetime trajectory
("world line") of the observer. The small dots are specific events in spacetime. If
one imagines these events to be the flashing of a light, then the events that pass
the two diagonal lines in the bottom half of the image (the past light cone of the
observer in the origin) are the events visible to the observer. The slope of the
world line (deviation from being vertical) gives the relative velocity to the
observer. Note how the view of spacetime changes when the observer accelerates.
Assume there are two observers O and Q, each using their own Cartesian
coordinate system to measure space and time intervals. O uses (t,x,y,z) and Q uses
(t',x',y',z'). Assume further that the coordinate systems are oriented so that the x-
axis and the x' -axis overlap, the y-axis is parallel to the y' -axis, as are the z-axis
and the z' -axis. The relative velocity between the two observers is v along the
common x-axis. Also assume that the origins of both coordinate systems are the
same. If all these hold, then the coordinate systems are said to be in standard
configuration. A symmetric presentation between the forward Lorentz
Transformation and the inverse Lorentz Transformation can be achieved if
coordinate systems are in symmetric configuration. The symmetric form
highlights that all physical laws should be of such a kind that they remain
unchanged under a Lorentz transformation.
RAPIDITY:
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The Lorentz transformation can be cast into another useful form by introducing a
parameter called the rapidity (an instance of hyperbolic angle) through the
equation:
Equivalently:
and therefore,
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General boosts:
For a boost in an arbitrary angle of rotation.
where I is the identity matrix, v is velocity written as a column vector and vT is its
transpose (a row vector).
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SPACETIME INTERVAL:
In a given coordinate system (xμ), if two events A and B are separated by
This can be written in another form using the Minkowski metric. In this
coordinate system,
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or
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SPECIAL RELATIVITY:
One of the most astounding consequences of Einstein's clock-setting method is the
idea that time is relative. In essence, each observer's frame of reference is
associated with a unique set of clocks, the result being that time passes at different
rates for different observers. This was a direct result of the Lorentz
transformations and is called time dilation. We can also clearly see from the
Lorentz "local time" transformation that the concept of the relativity of
simultaneity and of the relativity of length contraction are also consequences of
that clock-setting hypothesis.
Lorentz transformations can also be used to prove that magnetic and electric fields
are simply different aspects of the same force — the electromagnetic force. If we
have one charge or a collection of charges which are all stationary with respect to
each other, we can observe the system in a frame in which there is no motion of
the charges. In this frame, there is only an "electric field". If we switch to a
moving frame, the Lorentz transformation will predict that a "magnetic field" is
present. This field was initially unified in Maxwell's concept of the
"electromagnetic field".
HISTORY:
The transformations were first discovered and published by Joseph Larmor in
1897. In 1905, Henri Poincaré named them after the Dutch physicist and
mathematician Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) who had published a first
order version of these transformations in 1895 and the final version in 1899 and
1904.
Many physicists, including FitzGerald, Larmor, Lorentz and Woldemar Voigt, had
been discussing the physics behind these equations since 1887. Larmor and
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Lorentz, who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, were seeking the
transformations under which Maxwell's equations were invariant when
transformed from the ether to a moving frame. In early 1889, Heaviside had
shown from Maxwell's equations that the electric field surrounding a spherical
distribution of charge should cease to have spherical symmetry once the charge is
in motion relative to the ether. FitzGerald then conjectured that Heaviside’s
distortion result might be applied to a theory of intermolecular forces. Some
months later, FitzGerald published his conjecture in Science to explain the
baffling outcome of the 1887 ether-wind experiment of Michelson and Morley.
This became known as the FitzGerald-Lorentz explanation of the Michelson-
Morley null result, known early on through the writings of Lodge, Lorentz,
Larmor, and FitzGerald. Their explanation was widely accepted as correct before
1905. Larmor gets credit for discovering the basic equations in 1897 and for being
first in understanding the crucial time dilation property inherent in his equations.
"It is the great merit of H. A. Lorentz to have seen that the fundamental equations
of electromagnetism admit a group of transformations which enables them to have
the same form when one passes from one frame of reference to another; this new
transformation has the most profound implications for the transformations of
space and time".
DERIVATION:
The usual treatment (e.g., Einstein's original work) is based on the invariance of
the speed of light. However, this is not necessarily the starting point: indeed (as is
exposed, for example, in the second volume of the Course in Theoretical Physics
by Landau and Lifshitz), what is really at stake is the locality of interactions: one
supposes that the influence that one particle, say, exerts on another can not be
transmitted instantaneously. Hence, there exists a theoretical maximal speed of
information transmission which must be invariant, and it turns out that this speed
coincides with the speed of light in vacuum. The need for locality in physical
theories was already noted by Newton (see Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers"), who
considered the notion of an action at a distance "philosophically absurd" and
believed that gravity must be transmitted by an agent (interstellar aether) which
obeys certain physical laws.
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aether flow. The mirror system reflected the light back into the interferometer. If
there were an aether drift, it would produce a phase shift and a change in the
interference that would be detected. However, given the results were negative,
rather than validating the aether, based upon the findings aether was not
confirmed. This was a major step in science that eventually resulted in Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity.
In a 1964 paper, Erik Christopher Zeeman showed that the causality preserving
property, a condition that is weaker in a mathematical sense than the invariance of
the speed of light, is enough to assure that the coordinate transformations are the
Lorentz transformations.
GALILEAN TRANSFORMATIONS:
If then we get the Galilean-Newtonian kinematics with the Galilean
transformation,
where time is absolute, t' = t, and the relative velocity v of two inertial frames is
not limited.
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speed of light in vacuum. This yields and thus we get special relativity
with Lorentz transformation
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where the speed of light is a finite universal constant determining the highest
possible relative velocity between inertial frames.
Only experiment can answer the question which of the two possibilities, κ = 0 or κ
< 0, is realised in our world. The experiments measuring the speed of light, first
performed by a Danish physicist Ole Rømer, show that it is finite, and the
Michelson–Morley experiment showed that it is an absolute speed, and thus that κ
< 0.
In Einstein's relativity, the main difference with Galilean relativity is that space is
a function of time and vice-versa: t ≠ t’. The most general linear relationship is
obtained with four constant coefficients, α, β, γ and v:
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Replacing t’ with the help of the second equation, the first one writes:
PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY:
According to the principle of relativity, there is no privileged Galilean frame of
reference. One has to find the same Lorentz transformation from frame R to R' or
from R' to R. As in the Galilean transformation, the sign of the transport velocity v
has to be changed when passing from one frame to the other.
The following derivation uses only the principle of relativity which is independent
of light velocity constancy. The inverse transformation of
is :
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and, finally:
We have now all the coefficients needed and, therefore, the Lorentz
transformation :
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