where:
Note that this is the sum of the:
  • Dirac Lagrangian, which only describes the "inertia of bodies" part of the equation
  • the electromagnetic interaction term , which describes term describes forces
Note that the relationship between and is not explicit. However, if we knew what type of particle we were talking about, e.g. electron, then the knowledge of psi would also give the charge distribution and therefore
As mentioned at the beginning of Quantum Field Theory lecture notes by David Tong (2007):
Video 1.
Particle Physics is Founded on This Principle! by Physics with Elliot (2022)
Source.
Like the rest of the Standard Model Lagrangian, this can be split into two parts:
Video 1.
Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)
Source.
As mentioned at the start of the video, he starts with the Dirac equation Lagrangian derived in a previous video. It has nothing to do with electromagnetism specifically.
He notes that that Dirac Lagrangian, besides being globally Lorentz invariant, it also also has a global invariance.
However, it does not have a local invariance if the transformation depends on the point in spacetime.
He doesn't mention it, but I think this is highly desirable, because in general local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents, and in this case we want conservation of charges.
To fix that, he adds an extra gauge field (a field of matrices) to the regular derivative, and the resulting derivative has a fancy name: the covariant derivative.
Then finally he notes that this gauge field he had to add has to transform exactly like the electromagnetic four-potential!
So he uses that as the gauge, and also adds in the Maxwell Lagrangian in the same go. It is kind of a guess, but it is a natural guess, and it turns out to be correct.

Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.