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Lorentz Transformation in 3D

This document derives the Lorentz transformations for relating space-time coordinates between two reference frames S and S' where S' is moving at an arbitrary velocity v relative to S. It does this by first splitting vectors into components parallel and perpendicular to the velocity vector v. It then shows that the transformations are similar to the standard 1D case where v is along the x-axis. Taking the dot product of position and velocity vectors allows writing the time transformation in terms of these dot products. Finally, the complete transformations are written relating coordinates (r,t) in S to coordinates (r',t') in S'.

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239 views2 pages

Lorentz Transformation in 3D

This document derives the Lorentz transformations for relating space-time coordinates between two reference frames S and S' where S' is moving at an arbitrary velocity v relative to S. It does this by first splitting vectors into components parallel and perpendicular to the velocity vector v. It then shows that the transformations are similar to the standard 1D case where v is along the x-axis. Taking the dot product of position and velocity vectors allows writing the time transformation in terms of these dot products. Finally, the complete transformations are written relating coordinates (r,t) in S to coordinates (r',t') in S'.

Uploaded by

thisapebiz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Suppose we have the S-frame move with an arbitrary velocity v relative to

S. We have an event that happens at r in the S-frame, and r in the S-frame.


To find the expressions for r, it will be much easier to split r and r into two
components, its component parallel to v and its components perpendicular
to v.
r=r + r
We learned that for the S-frame that moves along the x-direction relative to
the S-frame, only the distance in the x direction, or the distance parallel to
the velocity, is affected. The distance in y and z direction are not affected. If
we think about it, this 3d transformation is similar to one we learned. If we
were to tilt the axiss of both the S and S frame so that v is pointed in the x
direction, the scenario looks like the one we looked at. Therefore, it can be
concluded that the equations will also apply to this situation. However, now
we replace the x and v of the original transformation in the time equation
with v and the r. Although you cannot multiply vectors like that, we can
solve this by using a dot product which give the same effect of multiplying
because all we want is to multiply the magnitudes of the parallel vectors. If
we take the dot product of r and v, we get:
r v=r v +r v=0+r v=r v
Where the characters in bold are vectors and the ones not in bold are the
magnitudes of those vectors. If we use this correlation it makes sense. The
dot product of the parallel vectors yield the product of the magnitudes of the
vectors. The original transformation can be written like this:

t ' = t

xv
x v
= t 2
2
c
c

) (

We apply this connection to the 3D problem and get this equation:

t ' = t

r v
c

) (

= t

r v
2

) (

= t

rv
c2

This gives us the expression for t and t, and now we move on to the expression for
r and r.
We split r into its components like before:

r '=r ' + r '


As we stated before, only the parallel component of r is warped by the Lorentz
factor, leaving the perpendicular component equal to the perpendicular component
of r:

r '=r + r '
Using the same understanding previously discussed the expression for r is
the same as in the original transformation. We just replace x and v with the
vectors v and the r, as done before. This gives us this equation:
r ' =r + (r v t )
Substituting

r =rr

into the equation, after simplifying we get


'

r =r +( 1)r v t
Because r is parallel to v can be written as the magnitude of r and the unit
vector of v:
v r v v r v v
r =r =
=
v
v v
v v

( ) ( )

Plugging this into the equation before yields the final equation:
r ' =r + ( 1 )

r vt v
( r vv ) vv v t=( 1
)
v
2

From the observations that we made in the beginning of this explanation, we have
found that for a S-frame moving in an arbitrary velocity relative to S, the
relationship between (r, t) and (r, t) is expressed in the equations,

t ' = t

rv
c2

)
r ' =r +

1
r v t v
v2

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