Special Relativity

Lectured by Prof. Arjun Berera

February 20, 2014

The Nature of Light

For a long time, physicists wondered about the nature of light. In particular, they wanted to
know if light was a wave or a particle.
It was not until the dawn of the 20th century and the advent of Quantum Mechanics before it
was understood that light, like matter, had a dual nature; it can behave both as a wave and a
particle - more on this in other lectures.
In the 19th century, Thomas Young conducted some experiments that led to a pervading belief
that light was a wave. This thinking led to Maxwell developing his famous equations describing
the propagation of light and other electromagnetic radiation.
If light was a wave, then, physicists argued that there had to be some medium through which
this wave could propagate - like sound does in air. They imagined that this medium, which
they called the ether, permeated the whole of space and then it was this that light travelled
through at a fixed velocity.

Michelson-Morley Experiment - 1
At the end of the 19th century, Michelson and Morley conducted an experiment to test
whether or not the ether was really there.
Because the Earth moves around the sun, it must mean that the Earths motion relative to this
ether changes during the year.

v"
S"

D"

The experiment uses a piece of equipment called an interferometer. A diagram of this

equipment is shown. It consists of a light source (S) which fires a light beam towards the
centre.
At the centre, the beam is split into two beams (red and blue) which travel at right angles to
each other towards mirrors located a distance L from the centre.
Each beam hits the mirror and bounces back to the centre, at which point the two beams
recombine and head towards the detector (D).

Michelson-Morley Experiment - 2

Now, suppose this interferometer is moving at some velocity v through the ether in the
direction of the arrow. The light beam going parallel to this motion (red), then, takes some
time T||1 to reach the mirror. Light travels at a speed c through the ether, so in this time it
travels a distance cT||1 . Looking at the diagram, we see that the distance it has travelled is
also the length L plus the additional amount the mirror travelled in this time, vT||1 . Thus, the
distance travelled = cT||1 = L + vT||1 . You can rearrange this equation to find T||1 = (c L v ) .
You can look at this another way - if the interferometer is moving with velocity v with respect
to the ether, it is the same as the ether moving with velocity v in the opposite direction with
respect to the interferometer.
So as the light moves in the right-hand direction, it is moving in the opposite direction to the
flow of the ether. Thus the velocity of light is slowed to c v . It is similar to if you were
swimming upstream in a river - as you move forward, the river flow (or in this case, the ether
flow) carries you back.

Michelson-Morley Experiment - 3
Now lets think about the journey back from the mirror to the centre. The light is now moving
in the direction of the ether flow so its speed is enhanced rather than slowed and therefore
L
T||2 = c+v
. This gives a total time for the journey to and fro of T||1 + T||2 = T|| = 22Lc 2 .
c

1
vT
2

1
cT
2

For the journey across the ether (blue), you can apply Pythagoras theorem to the triangle
shown in the diagram (in this case, the light doesnt travel with or against the ether flow so its
speed does not change) to find that the time to go up and back from the mirror is
T? = p 2L
.
2
2
c

Thus, the dierence between the times is about T|| T? Lc ( vc )2 . This is a positive
number, so the beam going perpendicular to the ether flow will arrive back at the centre sooner
than the beam that goes parallel. Because of this, the two light beams going these two
dierent directions when they combine again will have slightly shifted waves, which can then
be detected.
When the experiment was done, however, it showed that there was no such shift in the light
waves!

Towards Special Relativity - A Solution to the Null Result

After this unexpected result, physicists were confused and were scrambling to find an
explanation. Many physicists still wanted to believe the ether was there and various ideas were
proposed. For example, some thought that the Earth dragged the ether along as it moved
through it, so there would be no relative motion. However, most of these ideas proved to be
unsuccessful.
One idea, proposed independently by Fitzgerald and Lorentz, had it that in the direction of
motion an object gets contracted. Lorentz even produced an exact formula for this contraction
that could precisely explain the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
This idea, however, led to a lot of complicated questions about the nature of forces - for
example, do all forces contract in that direction or just the electromagnetic force? These
questions had no easy answer.
In 1905, Albert Einstein came along with his now famous Theory of Special Relativity.

Towards Special Relativity - The Two Postulates

Einsteins theory rested on the truth of two postulates:

1) The laws of Physics are the same in all reference frames moving with a constant

velocity with respect to each other.

2) The speed of light, c, is the same in all reference frames moving with a constant

velocity with respect to each other.

The second of these looks quite simple, but is actually very unintuitive. We will now see
why.

The Second Postulate

The second postulate states that all observers will agree on the speed of light no matter what
the relative velocity between them is, so long as it is constant. For example, if you and a friend
both start at rest and your friend switches on a torch, you will both obviously measure the
same value for the speed of light, c. Now, if your friend starts to move in the direction of the
light beam coming from the torch and you stand still, you will both still agree on the exact
same value for the speed of light, c.
This is not what you would expect. Replace the beams of light with tennis balls, for example.
When you are both at rest, when your friend throws the ball in front of them you will measure
some velocity v for the ball that your friend will agree with. If your friend now moves and
throws the ball in their direction of motion, they will tell you that the velocity of the ball was
again v . You would disagree, however. You would say that the velocity of the ball was v plus
the velocity at which your friend was moving. Both of you are correct in your own reference
frames, but disagree on the actual number. This doesnt happen with light and that is what
Einstein realised.

Time and Special Relativity - 1

The postulates of Special Relativity lead to several consequences with are unintuitive. For one
thing, they completely altered our notion of time. We will see this now in a simple example.
Let us consider a clock composed of two mirrors separated by a distance d and between them a
light pulse bounces. The light pulse going from the bottom to the top and then back to the
bottom can be regarded as one unit of time, or one tick of this light clock.
Let us place two identical light clocks, one in what we will call the lab frame, which is at rest,
and one in a rocket frame, which is moving at velocity v with respect to the lab. With respect
to the lab frame, the clock on the rocket travels a longer path, the diagonal path shown in the
diagram.
Since the speed of light is the same in both frames according to Special Relativity, the lab
frame will conclude that a light pulse in the rocket clock completes a tick in a time tCR = 2D
c
that is longer than the time it takes the lab clock to tick which takes some time tCL = 2d
c .
Therefore, the lab frame concludes that the moving clock in the rocket is ticking at a slower
rate.

Time and Special Relativity - 2

1 Dv
vt =
2 CR
c

If the clock in the lab frame measures

some interval of time t, then the time interval the lab
frame will see the rocket clock to have, t 0 , will be reduced by the ratio of Dd .

We can compute D using the pythagorean expression. D is the hypotenuse of the right angled
triangle in the diagram. The vertical side is the length of the light clock d. The horizontal side
t
is the distance the rocket has travelled in time CR
2 , which is the time it takes for the light to go
2
2
v 2 2
from the bottom to the top. So, D = d + ( c ) D . Rearranging, this means D = q d v 2 .
1

This means t 0 is less than t by a factor, which is related to what physicists call the gamma
q
factor, 1 = 1 ( vc )2 . This is how much slower the rocket clock appears to be going with
respect to an observer at rest with the lab clock.

Length Contraction - 1

The length of objects are also aected in Special Relativity. Looking again at the lab and
rocket systems, suppose now we have a rod which measures length L00 in the rocket frame
where it sits at rest. Here the zero subscript means proper length, which is the terminology
for the length of an object measured in the frame where it is at rest.
Let us measure the length of the rod in the lab frame by noting the times t1 and t2 when the
front and back of the rod respectively go past point P. Then the length of the rod measured in
the lab frame is L = v (t2 t1 ). We will call t the time interval t2 t1 .
The times t1 and t2 in the lab have corresponding times t10 and t20 measured in the rocket, with
L00 = v (t20 t10 ). Similarly we will call the time interval t20 t10 = t 0 .

Length Contraction - 2

With respect to the rod, the lab clock is now moving, so its time is slowed as
q
t = t 0 1 ( vc )2
q
q
So, in the lab frame, L = v t = v t 0 1 ( vc )2 = L00 1 ( vc )2

Thus the length of the moving rod has contracted when measured in the lab frame. Note that
this is the same expression for length contraction that Lorentz had initially derived, but the
interpretation of it in Special Relativity is very dierent from what Lorentz had proposed. In
fact Lorentz also had initially derived the expression for time slowing down we showed earlier,
but again his interpretation was very dierent from that in Special Relativity.
Note there is something interesting about the gamma factor. You can only take the square
2
root of a positive number, so 0 v 2 1 ! v c. Thus, this equation shows that an object
c
cannot move any faster than the speed of light. In fact, it turns out that anything with mass
has to travel strictly slower than the speed of light. This would seem to violate the tennis ball
example from earlier, then - it was said that the velocity is just additive. However, in reality, it
is not exactly additive and there are corrections to this. These corrections are tiny unless you
start going at a speed comparable to that of light and at this point, these corrections become
important and act in such a way as to not allow an object to reach the speed of light.

Invariant Interval

In Special Relativity, if two events are measured with time separation t between them and
length separation x between them, then it turns out the quantity c 2 t 2
x 2 is the same
number with respect to coordinates in all dierent frames moving at constant velocity with
respect to each other - lets see this in an example.
In the previous case where the length of the rod was measured, in the lab frame a time t
lapsed between measuring the front and back of the rod. Both measurements were done at the
same point in space, so x = 0.
Now in the rocket frame, the time lapse was t 0 between measuring the front and back of the
rod and there was a spatial separation x 0 = L00 . We also have that L00 = v t 0 .
Lets now check the value of this invariant interval expression in both frames and ask ourselves
whether the two are equal, as expected by Special Relativity. Namely, we ask does
c 2 t 2 = c 2 t 02
x 02 = c 2 t 02 v 2 t 02 ?
q
We had t = t 0 1 ( vc )2 by the relation for time slowing down. Inserting this above, we
find indeed that this expression for the invariant interval is the same in the two frames.

Energy-Mass Relation - 1
t$

t$ Par*cle$
x$
Lab$
x$

Finally, we now look at the relation between energy and mass. For this let us look at the
motion of a particle of mass m in two dierent frames. We will call the prime frame the one at
rest with the particle and the lab frame the one where the particle is moving at velocity v .
In the particle frame, at all times t 0 the particle is at position x 0 = 0, since as we said the
particle sits at rest in this frame, so its spatial coordinate never changes. If we now take the
0
0
derivative dt
= 1 and dx
= 0. Recall here that in the mathematics of calculus, the derivative
dt 0
dt 0
x 0 (t 0 + t 0 )

x 0 (t 0 )

for example dx
is simply the ratio
in the limit that the time interval
dt 0
t0
smaller and smaller. It describes how one quantity changes with another quantity.
02

t 0 gets

02

So the expression m2 c 2 dt 0
m2 dx
is simply the same invariant interval we just discussed
dt
dt 0
c 2 t 02
x 02 except with both expressions divided by the same factor of t 02 .
Also note the interval is multiplied by an overall factor of the particle mass squared m2 . So
what we get for this invariant interval expression is m2 c 2 .

Energy-Mass Relation - 2

Now lets look in the lab frame where the particle is moving. At time t in the lab the particle is
at position x.
We have mc 2 dt0 which we are simply calling pT . Note here we take the derivative with respect
dt
to the same quantity, t 0 , and we have simply called this expression pT to give it some name.
dx
We also have m dt
0 = mu = p, which is just the momentum of the particle.
So we have for this interval

2
pT
c2

p 2 and since this expression must equal the invariant interval

in the p
particle frame, it means it equals m2 c 2 . This therefore leads to the relation
pT = m 2 c 4 + p 2 c 2 .

When the first term is much larger than the second in the expression in the square root, we
2

p
find that pT mc 2 + 2m
. The second term is simply the kinetic energy of a particle of mass
m. So we identify pT as the energy of the particle, pT = E .

Now, we have the general relation E 2 = m2 c 4 + p 2 c 2 . As such, when the particle is at rest,
p = 0, we have the famous relation, E = mc 2 . But this expression is more general and tells us
the energy of the particle also when it is moving with nonzero momentum p. It tells us energy
is equal to the mass of the particle plus its energy of motion, through the p 2 momentum term.

Energy-Mass Relation - 3

So this equation tells us the relationship between energy and mass. For example, in nuclear
reactions such as atomic explosions and nuclear power plants, you start o with some mass and
then convert that to energy.
But this relation tells us of eects that work the other way, too. For example, in the Large
Hadron Collider, we collide two protons with a lot of kinetic energy each. They smash together
and a lot of this energy of motion goes into creating new particles - thus, to mass.
This concludes our discussion of Special Relativity and we now understand the origin of the
relation between energy and mass.

References

Spacetime Physics, Edwin F. Taylor and John A. Wheeler

W. H. Freeman 1963.

Physics Volume I, Duane E. Roller and Ronald Blum

Holden-Day 1981.

Foundations of Modern Cosmology, John F. Hawley and Katherine A. Holcomb

Oxford University Press 2005

Space Time Matter, Herman Weyl

Dover Books 1952.