Can the Lorenz-gauge potentials be considered physical quantities?
Classical Physics
2010-12-07 v1
Abstract
Two results support the idea that the scalar and vector potentials in the Lorenz gauge can be considered to be physical quantities: (i) they separately satisfy the properties of causality and propagation at the speed of light and not imply spurious terms and (ii) they can naturally be written in a manifestly covariant form. In this paper we introduce expressions for the Lorenz-gauge potentials at the present time in terms of electric and magnetic fields at the retarded time. These expressions provide a third result in favor of a physical interpretation of the Lorenz-gauge potentials: (iii) they can be regarded as causal effects of the observed electric and magnetic fields.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1012.1063,
title = {Can the Lorenz-gauge potentials be considered physical quantities?},
author = {Jose A. Heras and Guillermo Fernandez-Anaya},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.1063},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
12 pages