Past exam of the symmetry and relativity course of the University of Oxford 2019 1 c Solution 2026-10-25
The upper-left panel shows the three causal structure regions, with null boundaries included in the appropriate causal future and causal past. For the charged trajectory, use part b with , choosing the direction so that . The electric field gives the constant three-force and hence the shifted hyperbolaIt starts with a vertical tangent at the origin, stays strictly inside the future light cone, and asymptotes to . The other panels implement the coordinate and topology changes used below; they are original spacetime diagrams, not copies of source artwork.
Causal regions in Minkowski spacetime and in spatially or temporally periodic flat spacetimes
. Blue denotes the causal future, orange the causal past, green events in neither, and purple membership in both. The top panels use ordinary and boosted inertial coordinates. The spatial quotient identifies vertical edges and shows the accelerated worldline wrapping across them. The temporal quotient identifies horizontal edges; every event belongs to both causal sets. Details. Past exam of the symmetry and relativity course of the University of Oxford 2019 1 e Solution 2026-10-25
For causal reachability on a spatial circle, put and use a representative of the spatial circle. The lower-left panel of part c is a fundamental strip with its vertical edges identified. On the covering space the charged world line is still the solution of part b; on the quotient it isA jump between opposite strip edges is a coordinate seam, not a discontinuity of the physical world line. At its th complete lap, , soFor , the speed increases on each return while remaining below . Its kinetic energy increases byThere is no single-valued electrostatic potential energy on a circle: the nonzero electromotive force is . A globally defined magnetic vector potential one-form instead makes the driving explicit. In an embedded circuit, Faraday's law realizes this electromotive force through changing magnetic flux. More generally an external apparatus maintaining the field supplies the increasing particle energy. In an isolated dynamical field-plus-particle system, backreaction would change the field. Thus this is not a cyclic machine extracting work from a conservative potential, and it does not violate conservation of energy.
