At a fixed height, first determine the stored quantities per unit vertical height and per unit length along the line source. With , the triangular-profile line plume has the useful profile integral
The geometric volume is ; the mass is . The upward momentum is , while the buoyancy force is . Thus
Here positive buoyancy corresponds to a rising light plume. If instead buoyancy is defined kinematically, divide by ; the density-weighted convention here is the one matching the printed equations.
Multiply each local density by the vertical velocity to obtain the fluxes through a horizontal section, still per unit source length:
In particular, the stored momentum equals the mass flux , and the buoyancy flux is . The different triangular-profile factors in storage and flux must not be replaced by top-hat coefficients.
Apply volume conservation, mass conservation and vertical momentum flux balance to a slice of the triangular-profile line plume. Ambient ingestion contributes of volume and of mass per unit height and source length. The ambient is quiescent, so it supplies no leading vertical momentum. The integrated driving force is the stored buoyancy . Using the quantities from part (a), the non-Boussinesq triangular-profile line-plume balances are
Together with Batchelor entrainment, these are three equations for . They neglect viscous boundary stresses and streamwise pressure-force corrections within the integral-plume approximation.
Multiplying volume conservation by and subtracting times mass conservation cancels the ambient sources exactly, giving
This is buoyancy conservation in the homogeneous ambient; it is a consequence of the first two balances, not an additional independent equation.
Now take the Boussinesq approximation in inertia and entrainment, retaining the small density deficit in buoyancy. Then , and . Consequently
The mass source is . Substitution into the mass conservation, momentum and buoyancy balances gives the unsteady Boussinesq triangular-profile line-plume balances
These use density-weighted mass and momentum fluxes. Removing from some flux definitions while retaining it in the source would mix incompatible conventions.
Seek a nonzero-buoyancy, separable similarity solution of the unsteady Boussinesq triangular-profile line-plume balances, using powers of distance and time. Let , allowing a time origin, and initially take distance from the virtual origin. Balancing the powers in the momentum and buoyancy equations and the entrainment balance gives the form
One way to recover the exponents is to let and . Matching the spatial powers in , and gives ; matching the time powers gives . The momentum equation then gives the powers of . In the resulting solution, is time-independent, so the storage term in the first equation vanishes exactly.
Direct substitution yields the coefficient equations
For a rising buoyant solution , the last equation gives . The first then gives , and the second gives . The separable decaying line-plume similarity is therefore
Reconstructing the physical fields confirms
For example, and cancel; the momentum balance similarly gives .
The unshifted form uses and is defined for , with a singular zero-time limit. To give a finite solution for all , choose . The equations also permit replacing by , a plume virtual origin; at a finite physical source distance this family has flux histories proportional to . The Boussinesq approximation requires in the region modelled. This is a decaying similarity family; its time and virtual origins require source or initial data. The PDF supplies neither, so a unique forced-startup history cannot be selected from it. In particular, the singular unshifted field should not be presented as a regular solution at .
For a smooth test function , integration by parts gives the moment identity
The assumed decay removes all boundary terms. Apply it to , and . Writing gives the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck moment equations
Assume when using the normalized mean ; otherwise is undefined, while the unnormalized momentum equation still holds. Since is constant, . Their solutions are
Thus mass is conserved, the mean velocity tends to zero, and . This includes the mean velocity conclusion omitted from the converted TeX.
Work in one fixed inertial frame, and take positive velocity in the rocket's direction. During , the rocket ejects the positive amount of mass . Its exhaust has inertial velocity , by the Galilean transformation of velocities. Once expelled, that material retains its velocity because it experiences no external force. The system's momentum is therefore the rocket momentum plus the sum of all these exhaust momenta:
The minus sign comes from the positive expelled mass being .
Differentiate, applying the product rule to the rocket momentum and the fundamental theorem of calculus to the integral:
The momentum conservation law thus gives the nonrelativistic rocket equation
The same bookkeeping for kinetic energy gives
Its derivative is
where the rocket equation cancels the first two terms. Thus kinetic energy increases during mass ejection, with when and . This does not violate conservation of energy: the increase comes from stored internal energy.
Now denotes the instantaneous rest mass of the rocket, including its fuel and stored internal energy, and is measured in a fixed inertial frame. Assume the exhaust is expelled backwards with speed in the rocket's instantaneous rest frame. By the relativistic velocity-addition formula, material emitted at time has inertial velocity
It coasts at this velocity after emission.
The crucial change is that the expelled material's rest mass is not simply : some of the rocket's rest energy becomes exhaust motion. Instead, use conservation of relativistic energy. Put , so the rocket's energy is . The exhaust emitted during carries energy . For material moving at velocity , the relativistic energy-momentum relation gives momentum , since and . Hence the modified total momentum is
Meanwhile the total relativistic energy is . These expressions consistently account for both energy and momentum of the expelled material.
Differentiate the momentum formula. The momentum conservation law gives
To simplify it, use
Multiplying by , the equation becomes
The two terms containing cancel. Dividing by proves the relativistic rocket equation
Use units , the Minkowski metric , and the Fourier transform convention . Here gamma matrices satisfy , and is the Dirac adjoint. A single Dirac field describes both Electrons and Positrons; these are the particle and antiparticle sectors of that field.
The free Maxwell Lagrangian and Dirac action, with a linear covariant gauge condition for the photon, give
Before gauge fixing, the Maxwell Lagrangian has zero modes in field theory along , so its quadratic operator cannot be inverted on all potentials. In the linear Lorenz gauge, the Faddeev-Popov determinant is . It is independent of and may be absorbed into the normalization; the corresponding Faddeev-Popov ghost fields have no interacting vertices in this Abelian linear gauge. A residual gauge symmetry is removed by the specified boundary conditions.
The free generating functional is
The Dirac field variables and their sources are independent Grassmann fields in this path integral. They anticommute; replacing them by ordinary commuting fields would give the wrong statistics and the wrong functional determinant. The bosonic Gaussian functional integral contributes an inverse square root of a determinant, and the Grassmann Gaussian integral contributes a determinant. If is the photon quadratic operator and , completing the square gives
In the last expression and are the photon propagator and Dirac propagator, with Feynman i-epsilon prescription. The products include the appropriate spacetime integrals and index contractions. Functional derivatives with respect to , and consistently ordered left or right Grassmann derivatives with respect to the fermionic sources, generate the time ordering of the corresponding fields. In Feynman gauge, , the momentum-space two-point functions are
The Feynman i-epsilon prescription specifies vacuum boundary conditions rather than an arbitrary inverse of the differential operator.
The covariant photon propagator uses four potential components. Its operator formalism counterpart is Gupta-Bleuler quantization: impose and take the Gupta-Bleuler null-state quotient. This leaves a positive physical state space with two transverse photon polarization vectors. The temporal and longitudinal oscillator components occur in intermediate covariant expressions; the Ward identity removes their dependence from physical amplitudes. The free Dirac field uses the canonical anticommutation relations, producing the same fermionic signs as its Grassmann fields in the path integral.
The operator-path-integral equivalence can be seen directly with a regulator. Divide time into small intervals and insert complete sets of field-coordinate states for bosons, and resolutions in fermionic coherent states for fermions. The bosonic matrix elements produce the phase-space factor ; integrating out the quadratic canonical momentum produces the bosonic action. The fermionic coherent state overlaps produce the first-order term and the Berezin integral measure. Multiplying the short-time kernels recovers the path integral. Projecting the remote endpoints onto the Fock vacuum with an infinitesimal damping selects the same Feynman propagators as the operator formalism. Field insertions become time-ordered products under this construction. Conversely, their quadratic generating functional obeys the canonical free-field equations and has precisely the oscillator two-point functions, so its higher free correlators agree by the Wick theorem. This establishes the equivalence for the regulated free theory and order by order in the perturbation series.
To couple the matter field electromagnetically, promote its global phase symmetry to the local transformation
The gauge covariant derivative obeys . Replacing by in the Dirac action therefore gives the invariant matter density
The electromagnetic field tensor is unchanged by the local transformation. Thus the unfixed quantum electrodynamics action is gauge-invariant. The Dirac current is conserved by the matter equations, and the Electron and Positron excitations carry opposite charges. The added gauge fixing density selects a representative and is not itself invariant under arbitrary local transformations; it does not change gauge-invariant observables. At a free fermion vertex,
For external on-shell Dirac spinors the corresponding current contraction vanishes. The quantum extension is the Ward identity, which makes physical amplitudes insensitive to adding a multiple of the photon momentum to its polarization vector. A gauge-compatible regularization preserves this vector-current identity.
With , expand in powers of . A term of order contains spacetime integrations and . Applying the Wick theorem pairs the free fields: an - Wick contraction supplies a photon propagator, and a - Wick contraction supplies an oriented Dirac propagator. Each insertion supplies an interaction vertex. The permutations of contractions cancel the expansion factorials except for the Feynman-diagram symmetry factor. Interchanging Grassmann fields produces the fermionic sign, including a minus sign for every closed fermion loop. This is how Feynman diagrams arise from expectation values, rather than an extra dynamical assumption.
The normalized vacuum generating functional removes components with no external insertions. In the operator formalism, for an interacting-vacuum expectation value of an inserted product , the same cancellation appears as
Vacuum projection and the Feynman i-epsilon prescription are implicit. The linked-cluster theorem exponentiates all connected vacuum bubbles into the same factor in numerator and denominator, so it cancels. Normalize by to remove every vacuum component. This cancellation of vacuum bubbles still leaves products of disconnected diagrams that each contain external insertions. If only connected correlators are wanted, differentiate the connected generating functional .
The resulting momentum-space QED Feynman rules for the bare theory can be stated in Feynman gauge as follows:
Figure 1.
An oriented electron line meets a photon at the QED interaction vertex
.
The illustrated interaction vertex has incoming fermion momentum , incoming photon momentum , and outgoing fermion momentum . Its solid-line arrows indicate fermion flow. The photon wavy line has no fermion-flow arrow. The propagators, the vertex , momentum conservation, and the fermionic signs determine the perturbative amplitudes.
Define the open-string endpoint momentum flux along the open string by . Variation of the Nambu-Goto phase-space action gives
The two last equations are the Virasoro constraints. Integration of the momentum equation gives
Thus the necessary and sufficient condition for total momentum conservation is equality of the two endpoint fluxes, component by component. Vanishing of both fluxes is a sufficient local boundary condition.
The spatial boundary term in the action variation is . For free ends the endpoint variations are arbitrary, so
In a gauge with and nonzero this reduces to the usual Neumann boundary condition . The conclusion is conservation of total momentum, not that total momentum must vanish. The PDF contains the derivative in this conclusion; the TeX transcription drops it.
For endpoints confined to , the Dirichlet boundary condition fixes . It therefore imposes no requirement that vanish. Preserving the fixed position requires at each endpoint, but that is a different condition. For example, in gauge the endpoint momentum is zero while can be nonzero. Consequently is generally not conserved: the normal endpoint forces transfer momentum to the hyperplane. A dynamical D-brane recoils and carries the missing momentum. If the hyperplane is idealized as fixed, its external support absorbs the momentum. The combined string-and-support system conserves momentum; freely varying directions tangent to the hyperplane retain their vanishing-flux condition.