Faraday's Lines of Force as Strings: from Gauss' Law to the Arrow of Time

TL;DR

This paper reformulates classical electromagnetism using a string-based model of electric flux lines, deriving Maxwell's equations as an ensemble average and connecting electromagnetic theory to statistical mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel string-theoretic formulation of electromagnetism, linking flux lines to statistical mechanics and providing a new perspective on Maxwell's equations and the arrow of time.

Findings

Maxwell's equations emerge as an average over flux line ensembles

Retarded solutions are derived from high-temperature flux line statistics

Electromagnetic phenomena are connected to string dynamics and statistical mechanics

Abstract

We reformulate classical electromagnetism as the statistical mechanics of lines of electric flux with dynamics described by the string action in four dimensions. The retarded solution to Maxwell's equations emerges naturally as an average over a microcanonical ensemble of these lines of force at high temperature.