Charge Acceleration and Field-Lines Curvature: A Fundamental Symmetry and Consequent Asymmetries

TL;DR

This paper reveals a fundamental symmetry between charge acceleration and field-line curvature, providing new insights into electromagnetic phenomena and challenging traditional interpretations of radiation and field behavior.

Contribution

It establishes a quantitative link between charge acceleration and field-line curvature, proposing a novel symmetry that impacts understanding of radiation and electromagnetic field dynamics.

Findings

Charge acceleration causes field-line curvature similar to neighboring charge effects.

The field stores some of the charge's mass and kinetic energy as potential energy.

The symmetry offers explanations for radiation absence and field-line behavior in gravity.

Abstract

When a charge accelerates, its field-lines curve in a typical pattern. This pattern resembles the curvature induced on the field-lines by a neighboring charge. Not only does the latter case involve a similar curvature, it moreover results in attraction/repulsion. This suggests a hitherto unnoticed causal symmetry: charge acceleration-field curvature. We prove quantitatively that these two phenomena are essentially one and the same. The field stores some of the charge's mass, yet it is extended in space, hence when the charge accelerates, inertia makes the field lag behind. The resulting stress in the field stores some of the charge's kinetic energy in the form of potential energy. The electrostatic interaction is the approximate mirror image of this process: The potential energy stored within the field turns into the charge's kinetic energy. This partial symmetry offers novel insights into two debated issues in electromagnetism. The question whether a charge radiates in a gravitational field receives a new twist: If all the charge's field-lines end with opposite charges that also resist gravity, no radiation is expected. Similarly for the famous absence of a physical manifestation of the Maxwell equations' advanced solution: Just as Einstein argued, the reason for this absence is probabilistic rather than reflecting some inherent time-asymmetry. Despite the apparent equivalence between the "ontological" and "instrumentalist" viewpoints concerning the physical reality of field-lines, there may be cases in which their experimental predictions differ.