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Next: The Lagrangian for Electromagnetic Up: Classical Maxwell Fields Previous: Rationalized Heaviside-Lorentz Units Contents
The simplest way and the correct way to do this is to make the Electric and Magnetic fields components of a rank 2 (antisymmetric) tensor.
The fields can simply be written in terms of the vector potential, (which is a Lorentz vector) .
Note that this is automatically antisymmetric under the interchange of the indices. As before, the first two (sourceless) Maxwell equations are automatically satisfied for fields
derived from a vector potential. We may write the other two Maxwell equations in terms of the 4-vector .
Which is why the T-shirt given to every MIT freshman when they take Electricity and Magnetism should say
For some peace of mind, lets verify a few terms in the equations. Clearly all the diagonal terms in the field tensor are zero by antisymmetry. Lets take some example off-diagonal
terms in the field tensor, checking the (old) definition of the fields in terms of the potential.
Lets also check what the Maxwell equation says for the last row in the tensor.
We will not bother to check the Lorentz transformation of the fields here. Its right.
Next: The Lagrangian for Electromagnetic Up: Classical Maxwell Fields Previous: Rationalized Heaviside-Lorentz Units Contents
Jim Branson 2013-04-22