Special Theory of Relativity in Electrodynamics: Devang Bajpai October 2024

Special Theory of Relativity in Electrodynamics
Devang Bajpai
October 2024
Contents
1 Postulates of Special Relativity 1
2 Spinors 1
3 The Lorentz Group and SL(2, C) 2
1 Postulates of Special Relativity

Although Newtonian mechanics gives an excellent description of Nature, it is not universally valid. When
we reach extreme conditions — the very small, the very heavy or the very fast — the Newtonian Universe
that we’re used to needs replacing. You could say that Newtonian mechanics encapsulates our common sense
view of the world. One of the major themes of twentieth century physics is that when you look away from
our everyday world, common sense is not much use.
One such extreme is when particles travel very fast. The theory that replaces Newtonian mechanics
is due to Einstein. It is called special relativity. The effects of special relativity become apparent only
when the speeds of particles become comparable to the speed of light in the vacuum. The speed of light is
c ≈ 299792458ms−1
The theory of special relativity rests on two experimental facts. (We will look at the evidence for these
shortly). In fact, we have already met the first of these: it is simply the Galilean principle of relativity. The
second postulate is more surprising:
• Postulate 1: The principle of relativity: the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames.
• Postulate 2: The speed of light in vacuum is the same in all inertial frames
2 Spinors
In this section, we return to understand more of the mathematical structure underlying spacetime and the
Lorentz group. Ultimately, the new structure that we will uncover here has very important implications for
the way the Universe works. But we will also see a nice application of our new tools.
Let’s start by recalling our definition of the Lorentz group. We introduced elements of the group as 4 × 4
real matrices satisfying
ΛT ηΛ = η
where η = diag(1, −1, −1, −1) s the diagonal Minkowski metric. Elements with det Λ = 1 define the group
SO(1, 3). If we further restrict to elements with the upper-left component Λ00 > 0, which ensures that the
transformation does not flip the direction of time, then we have the sub-group SO+ (1, 3). As we will now
see, there’s some rather beautiful subtleties associated with this group.
1
3 The Lorentz Group and SL(2, C)
The Lorentz group SO+ (1, 3)is (almost) the same as the rather different looking group
SL(2, C), the group of 2 × 2complex matrices with determinant one. We will start by providing the map
between these two groups, and explaining what the word “almost” means. Before we talk about Lorentz
transformations, let’s first go back to think about the points in Minkowski space themselves. So far, we’ve
been labelling these by the 4-vector X µ = (ct, x, y, z). But there is alternative way of labelling these points,
not by a 4-vector but instead by a 2 × 2 Hermitian matrix. Given a 4-vector X, we can write down such a
matrix X̂ by

ct + z x − iy
X̂ = (1)
x + iy ct − z
which clearly satisfies X̂ = X̂ † . Moreover, this is the most general form of a 2 × 2 Hermitian matrix. This
means that there is a one-to-one map between 4-vectors X and 2 × 2 Hermitian matrices. We can equally
well take the latter to define a point in Minkowski space. We learned earlier that Minkowski space comes
equipped with an inner product structure on 4-vectors. The inner product X · X measures the distance in
spacetime between the origin and the point X. But this is very natural in terms of the matrix language: it
is simply the determinant
X · X = det X̂
With this new way of labelling points in Minkowski space using the matrices X̂, we can return to think
about Lorentz transformations. Recall that, by definition, a Lorentz transformation is a linear map which
preserves the inner-product structure on Minkowski space. Let’s consider a general matrix A ∈ SL(2, C).
We can use this to define a linear map

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Special Theory of Relativity in Electrodynamics

3 The Lorentz Group and SL(2, C) 2

1 Postulates of Special Relativity

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