Spencer Operator and Applications: From Continuum Mechanics to Mathematical physics

TL;DR

This paper explores the Spencer operator's potential to unify diverse theories in continuum mechanics, electromagnetism, and physics, revealing its historical significance and challenging existing mathematical foundations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the Spencer operator links key historical works across multiple disciplines and exposes contradictions in current mathematical physics foundations.

Findings

Reveals the Spencer operator's role in unifying elasticity, algebra, and electromagnetism.

Shows that modern differential and homological methods conflict with established physics theories.

Highlights the importance of algebraic approaches in understanding control systems and field-matter interactions.

Abstract

The Spencer operator, introduced by D.C. Spencer fifty years ago, is rarely used in mathematics today and, up to our knowledge, has never been used in engineering applications or mathematical physics. The main purpose of this paper, an extended version of a lecture at the second workshop on Differential Equations by Algebraic Methods (DEAM2, february 9-11, 2011, Linz, Austria) is to prove that the use of the Spencer operator constitutes the common secret of the three following famous books published about at the same time in the beginning of the last century, though they do not seem to have anything in common at first sight as they are successively dealing with elasticity theory, commutative algebra, electromagnetism and general relativity: (C) E. and F. COSSERAT: "Th\'eorie des Corps D\'eformables", Hermann, Paris, 1909. (M) F.S. MACAULAY: "The Algebraic Theory of Modular Systems", Cambridge University Press, 1916. (W) H. WEYL: "Space, Time, Matter", Springer, Berlin, 1918 (1922, 1958; Dover, 1952). Meanwhile, we shall point out the importance of (M) for studying control identifiability and of (C)+(W) for the group theoretical unification of finite elements in engineering sciences, recovering in a purely mathematical way well known field-matter coupling phenomena (piezzoelectricity, photoelasticity, streaming birefringence, viscosity, ...). As a byproduct and though disturbing it could be, we shall prove that these unavoidable new diferential and homological methods contradict the mathematical foundations of both engineering (continuum mechanics,electromagnetism) and mathematical (gauge theory, general relativity) physics.