For a free massless real scalar field with wave speed set to one and metric , define and . Its symmetric stress-energy tensor is . The Lorentz current has density and flux . Its conserved charge is the displayed expression when boundary flux vanishes. In one spatial dimension it generates boosts, not spatial rotations; there is no independent purely spatial angular-momentum component. Its conservation says that the center of energy moves uniformly. This is a symmetry of the wave-field model and need not survive boundaries or additional material effects.
Lorentz invariance gives the Lorentz current
An infinitesimal rotation through angle around the -axis has
corresponding, up to the stated index convention, to the only nonzero components . Its conserved angular momentum is
A continuous symmetry is a family of transformations depending continuously on parameters for which the action is unchanged, possibly up to a spacetime boundary term. For an infinitesimal field variation , a Noether current obeys
when the Euler-Lagrange field equation holds. Its Noether charge
is conserved provided the flux vanishes.
Noether theorem gives the implication from a differentiable global variational symmetry to an on-shell conserved current. A conserved current gives a conserved charge only under suitable boundary and convergence conditions. Conversely, a conserved charge generates a continuous symmetry through Poisson brackets classically or a commutator quantum mechanically when a regular Hamiltonian formulation exists. Currents can be changed by identically conserved improvement terms, and inverse Noether statements require regularity and the exclusion of such trivial currents, so the three notions are related but not literally in one-to-one correspondence.
For spacetime translations, the canonical stress-energy tensor is
For
raising the second index gives the symmetric tensor
Translation invariance gives four conserved currents , one for each fixed , and the four conserved charges are the four-momentum
is the energy and is the spatial momentum.
The Lorentz transformation variation of a scalar is generated solely by its argument. The corresponding Lorentz current is
Using and symmetry of ,
In particular, conservation of the boost charge
implies
The quantity denoted in the question is therefore the conserved momentum component , assuming the same vanishing boundary flux.
An infinitesimal Lorentz transformation is with . Applying Noether theorem to this continuous symmetry gives the conserved Lorentz current
Its Noether charge is . Substituting the open-string mode expansion and using orthogonality of the cosine modes yields
The first term is orbital angular momentum; the sum is the contribution of the string oscillators.
Use and Minkowski metric , with the wave speed equal to one. Regarding as a scalar field, the symmetric canonical stress-energy tensor is
It obeys on the wave equation. For a scalar field the intrinsic spin current vanishes. The total orbital Lorentz current and its integrated angular-momentum tensor are
Because there is only one spatial dimension, its only independent possibly nonzero component is
where . The corresponding flux is . Symmetry and conservation of give
Thus is conserved provided the boundary flux vanishes and the integrals exist. For example, localized wave packets on an infinite line have this property. One can also check directly that , so the two terms in have cancelling derivatives.
The significance is the boost charge of a one-dimensional scalar field. There is no independent spatial rotation or ordinary spatial angular-momentum component in one dimension. Instead, the action has the mathematical Lorentz invariance of a massless wave field with invariant speed , and generates its boost. Its conservation says that the center of energy moves uniformly. This is a symmetry of the ideal wave-field model, rather than an assertion of fundamental vacuum Lorentz symmetry for a material rod. Fixed boundaries can break it, and a general solution with nonvanishing boundary flux need not conserve the integrated charge.