Faraday Tensor
Physics
World
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The
electric and magnetic field’s, E = (E1,
E2,
E3)
= (Ex,
Ey,
Ez)
and B = (B1,
B2,
B3)
= (Bx,
By,
Bz),
can be expressed in terms of the Coulomb potential, F,
and the magnetic vector potential, a =
(a1,
a2,
a3)
= (ax,
ay,
az),
as
and
The 4-potential
is defined as
The Faraday
tensor, whose components are Fab,
is defined in terms of the components of the 4-potential as
where
The
Faraday tensor is antisymetric since Fab =
-Fba.
It therefore has 6
independent components, three of which are found by evaluating F0k
to obtain
The last three are F12, F13, F23, where
Eqs.
(6) through (8) can be expressed in matrix form as