Use suffix notation, with repeated indices summed. Contracting the two Levi-Civita symbols gives
Applying the product rule to and substituting the two evolution equations yields
In the second line we renamed dummy indices in and then combined product derivatives. Hence
No zero-divergence assumption was used in this local identity.
When both fields are solenoidal vector fields, the product rule for divergence rewrites this as a conservation law:
Because the volume is fixed, differentiation under its integral and the divergence theorem give
under the two tangency conditions. Thus the volume integral is conserved. This is helicity conservation by tangent boundary conditions; when , the density is the magnetic helicity density.
For the given axisymmetric field, the curl in spherical coordinates gives
There are no derivatives and . Consequently
The volume form in spherical polar coordinates is , so
Here at , as required for the magnetic-field tangency condition in the conservation argument; tangency of is a separate hypothesis.
The scalar contraction of the electromagnetic field tensor is
With orientation , define the dual electromagnetic field tensor by . Direct substitution gives
The first is a Lorentz scalar; the second is a pseudoscalar, invariant under proper Lorentz transformations such as boosts and rotations. Under spatial inversion changes sign while does not, so reverses sign. For example, has product before inversion and afterwards. Thus the unrestricted statement including improper transformations needs this qualification.
For the spacetime integral, assume a globally regular electromagnetic four-potential on ordinary Minkowski space and sufficient boundary decay. Using and ,
Consequently
The magnetic helicity boundary term controls the integral. If its surface flux vanishes and the magnetic helicity vanishes at both temporal ends, then
Compactly supported smooth potentials are one sufficient version of the intended falloff assumption. The local identity is exact, but vanishing fields at spatial infinity alone is insufficient. For a concrete counterexample, take and, in dimensionless coordinates,
where changes smoothly from zero to one and has compact temporal support. Both electric fields and magnetic fields vanish rapidly at spatial infinity, but
The counterexample leaves a final magnetic field and therefore fails the extra temporal boundary condition. It shows exactly why the printed integral cannot follow from a merely spatial reading of “at infinity”; vanishing of the full boundary term is the needed hypothesis.
Selective decay bound for magnetic helicity Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-11-05
With the closed-boundary assumptions of the resistive magnetic-helicity balance, define the nonnegative resistive magnetic energy loss . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives the displayed bound. Consequently, in a family of fields with bounded as , resistive magnetic helicity loss tends to zero even when remains finite. This is an absolute conservation estimate; it is not a universal comparison of fractional decay times. For a single Beltrami field with and no motion, both and have the same fractional decay rate .
Statistical reflection symmetry Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-11-05
Statistical reflection symmetry means that the joint distributions of a random field are unchanged by a simultaneous spatial reflection, with each field component transformed according to its vector or pseudovector character. For an isotropic magnetic field, it excludes a parity-odd magnetic helicity contribution to the two-point spectral tensor.