In physics, in particular in special relativity and general relativity, a four-velocity is a four-vector in four-dimensional spacetime [nb 1] that represents the relativistic counterpart of velocity, which is a three-dimensional vector in space.
Physical events correspond to mathematical points in time and space, the set of all of them together forming a mathematical model of physical four-dimensional spacetime. The history of an object traces a curve in spacetime, called its world line. If the object has mass, so that its speed is necessarily less than the speed of light, the world line may be parametrized by the proper time of the object. The four-velocity is the rate of change of four-position with respect to the proper time along the curve. The velocity, in contrast, is the rate of change of the position in (three-dimensional) space of the object, as seen by an observer, with respect to the observer's time.
The value of the magnitude of an object's four-velocity, i.e. the quantity obtained by applying the metric tensor g to the four-velocity U, that is ‖U‖2 = U ⋅ U = gμνUνUμ, is always equal to ±c2, where c is the speed of light. Whether the plus or minus sign applies depends on the choice of metric signature. For an object at rest its four-velocity is parallel to the direction of the time coordinate with U0 = c. A four-velocity is thus the normalized future-directed timelike tangent vector to a world line, and is a contravariant vector. Though it is a vector, addition of two four-velocities does not yield a four-velocity: the space of four-velocities is not itself a vector space. [nb 2]
The path of an object in three-dimensional space (in an inertial frame) may be expressed in terms of three spatial coordinate functions xi(t) of time t, where i is an index which takes values 1, 2, 3.
The three coordinates form the 3d position vector, written as a column vector
The components of the velocity (tangent to the curve) at any point on the world line are
Each component is simply written
In Einstein's theory of relativity, the path of an object moving relative to a particular frame of reference is defined by four coordinate functions xμ(τ), where μ is a spacetime index which takes the value 0 for the timelike component, and 1, 2, 3 for the spacelike coordinates. The zeroth component is defined as the time coordinate multiplied by c,
Each function depends on one parameter τ called its proper time. As a column vector,
From time dilation, the differentials in coordinate time t and proper time τ are related by
where the Lorentz factor,
is a function of the Euclidean norm u of the 3d velocity vector :
The four-velocity is the tangent four-vector of a timelike world line. The four-velocity at any point of world line is defined as:
where is the four-position and is the proper time. [1]
The four-velocity defined here using the proper time of an object does not exist for world lines for massless objects such as photons travelling at the speed of light; nor is it defined for tachyonic world lines, where the tangent vector is spacelike.
The relationship between the time t and the coordinate time x0 is defined by
Taking the derivative of this with respect to the proper time τ, we find the Uμ velocity component for μ = 0:
and for the other 3 components to proper time we get the Uμ velocity component for μ = 1, 2, 3:
where we have used the chain rule and the relationships
Thus, we find for the four-velocity :
Written in standard four-vector notation this is:
where is the temporal component and is the spatial component.
In terms of the synchronized clocks and rulers associated with a particular slice of flat spacetime, the three spacelike components of four-velocity define a traveling object's proper velocity i.e. the rate at which distance is covered in the reference map frame per unit proper time elapsed on clocks traveling with the object.
Unlike most other four-vectors, the four-velocity has only 3 independent components instead of 4. The factor is a function of the three-dimensional velocity .
When certain Lorentz scalars are multiplied by the four-velocity, one then gets new physical four-vectors that have 4 independent components.
For example:
Effectively, the factor combines with the Lorentz scalar term to make the 4th independent component
and
Using the differential of the four-position in the rest frame, the magnitude of the four-velocity can be obtained by the Minkowski metric with signature (−, +, +, +):
in short, the magnitude of the four-velocity for any object is always a fixed constant:
In a moving frame, the same norm is:
so that:
which reduces to the definition of the Lorentz factor.
In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation is then parameterized by the negative of this velocity. The transformations are named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz.
The vorticity equation of fluid dynamics describes the evolution of the vorticity ω of a particle of a fluid as it moves with its flow; that is, the local rotation of the fluid. The governing equation is:
In special relativity, four-momentum (also called momentum–energy or momenergy) is the generalization of the classical three-dimensional momentum to four-dimensional spacetime. Momentum is a vector in three dimensions; similarly four-momentum is a four-vector in spacetime. The contravariant four-momentum of a particle with relativistic energy E and three-momentum p = (px, py, pz) = γmv, where v is the particle's three-velocity and γ the Lorentz factor, is
In special relativity, a four-vector is an object with four components, which transform in a specific way under Lorentz transformations. Specifically, a four-vector is an element of a four-dimensional vector space considered as a representation space of the standard representation of the Lorentz group, the representation. It differs from a Euclidean vector in how its magnitude is determined. The transformations that preserve this magnitude are the Lorentz transformations, which include spatial rotations and boosts.
In fluid dynamics, the Euler equations are a set of quasilinear partial differential equations governing adiabatic and inviscid flow. They are named after Leonhard Euler. In particular, they correspond to the Navier–Stokes equations with zero viscosity and zero thermal conductivity.
In mathematics, the covariant derivative is a way of specifying a derivative along tangent vectors of a manifold. Alternatively, the covariant derivative is a way of introducing and working with a connection on a manifold by means of a differential operator, to be contrasted with the approach given by a principal connection on the frame bundle – see affine connection. In the special case of a manifold isometrically embedded into a higher-dimensional Euclidean space, the covariant derivative can be viewed as the orthogonal projection of the Euclidean directional derivative onto the manifold's tangent space. In this case the Euclidean derivative is broken into two parts, the extrinsic normal component and the intrinsic covariant derivative component.
In relativistic physics, Lorentz symmetry or Lorentz invariance, named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, is an equivalence of observation or observational symmetry due to special relativity implying that the laws of physics stay the same for all observers that are moving with respect to one another within an inertial frame. It has also been described as "the feature of nature that says experimental results are independent of the orientation or the boost velocity of the laboratory through space".
In physics, the Hamilton–Jacobi equation, named after William Rowan Hamilton and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, is an alternative formulation of classical mechanics, equivalent to other formulations such as Newton's laws of motion, Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics.
In differential geometry, the four-gradient is the four-vector analogue of the gradient from vector calculus.
In a relativistic theory of physics, a Lorentz scalar is an expression, formed from items of the theory, which evaluates to a scalar, invariant under any Lorentz transformation. A Lorentz scalar may be generated from e.g., the scalar product of vectors, or from contracting tensors of the theory. While the components of vectors and tensors are in general altered under Lorentz transformations, Lorentz scalars remain unchanged.
In electromagnetism, the electromagnetic tensor or electromagnetic field tensor is a mathematical object that describes the electromagnetic field in spacetime. The field tensor was first used after the four-dimensional tensor formulation of special relativity was introduced by Hermann Minkowski. The tensor allows related physical laws to be written very concisely, and allows for the quantization of the electromagnetic field by Lagrangian formulation described below.
In general relativity, the metric tensor is the fundamental object of study. The metric captures all the geometric and causal structure of spacetime, being used to define notions such as time, distance, volume, curvature, angle, and separation of the future and the past.
In physics, the algebra of physical space (APS) is the use of the Clifford or geometric algebra Cl3,0(R) of the three-dimensional Euclidean space as a model for (3+1)-dimensional spacetime, representing a point in spacetime via a paravector.
The covariant formulation of classical electromagnetism refers to ways of writing the laws of classical electromagnetism in a form that is manifestly invariant under Lorentz transformations, in the formalism of special relativity using rectilinear inertial coordinate systems. These expressions both make it simple to prove that the laws of classical electromagnetism take the same form in any inertial coordinate system, and also provide a way to translate the fields and forces from one frame to another. However, this is not as general as Maxwell's equations in curved spacetime or non-rectilinear coordinate systems.
The theoretical and experimental justification for the Schrödinger equation motivates the discovery of the Schrödinger equation, the equation that describes the dynamics of nonrelativistic particles. The motivation uses photons, which are relativistic particles with dynamics described by Maxwell's equations, as an analogue for all types of particles.
In relativity theory, proper acceleration is the physical acceleration experienced by an object. It is thus acceleration relative to a free-fall, or inertial, observer who is momentarily at rest relative to the object being measured. Gravitation therefore does not cause proper acceleration, because the same gravity acts equally on the inertial observer. As a consequence, all inertial observers always have a proper acceleration of zero.
The intent of this article is to highlight the important points of the derivation of the Navier–Stokes equations as well as its application and formulation for different families of fluids.
The Cauchy momentum equation is a vector partial differential equation put forth by Cauchy that describes the non-relativistic momentum transport in any continuum.
In theoretical physics, relativistic Lagrangian mechanics is Lagrangian mechanics applied in the context of special relativity and general relativity.
Accelerations in special relativity (SR) follow, as in Newtonian Mechanics, by differentiation of velocity with respect to time. Because of the Lorentz transformation and time dilation, the concepts of time and distance become more complex, which also leads to more complex definitions of "acceleration". SR as the theory of flat Minkowski spacetime remains valid in the presence of accelerations, because general relativity (GR) is only required when there is curvature of spacetime caused by the energy–momentum tensor. However, since the amount of spacetime curvature is not particularly high on Earth or its vicinity, SR remains valid for most practical purposes, such as experiments in particle accelerators.
