A gauge-invariant Hamiltonian description of the motion of charged test particles

✍ Scribed by Dariusz Chruściński; Jerzy Kijowski

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 860 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0393-0440
• DOI: 10.1016/s0393-0440(97)00065-x

✦ Synopsis

New, gauge-independent, second-order Lagrangian for the motion of classical, charged test particles is used to derive the corresponding Hamiltonian formulation. For this purpose a (relatively little known) Hamiltonian description of theories derived from second-order Lagrangians is presented. Unlike in the standard approach, the canonical momenta arising here are explicitly gauge-invariant and have a clear physical interpretation. The reduced symplectic form obtained this way is (almost) equivalent to Souriau's form. This approach illustrates a new method of deriving equations of motion from field equations.