Relativistically Correct Electromagnetic Energy Flow

TL;DR

This paper corrects the expression for electromagnetic energy flow to ensure consistency with special relativity, enabling more accurate analysis of electromagnetic energy and momentum and challenging previous explanations based solely on relativistic mass motion.

Contribution

It introduces a relativistically consistent correction to the electromagnetic energy flow and tensor, enabling new insights into electromagnetic energy and momentum.

Findings

Corrected the local velocity of electromagnetic energy flow.

Expressed the energy-momentum tensor in a comoving frame.

Showed that electromagnetic momentum cannot be solely due to relativistic mass motion.

Abstract

Detailed study of the energy and momentum carried by the electromagnetic field can be a source of clues to possible new physics underlying the Maxwell Equations. But such study has been impeded by expressions for the parameters of the electromagnetic energy flow that are inconsistent with the transformation rules of special relativity. This paper begins by correcting a basic parameter, the local velocity of electromagnetic energy flow. This correction is derived by the direct application of the transformation rules of special relativity. After this correction, the electromagnetic energy-momentum tensor can then be expressed in a reference system comoving with the energy flow. This tensor can be made diagonal in the comoving system, and brought into a canonical form depending only on the energy density and one other parameter. The corrected energy flow and its energy-momentum tensor are illustrated by a simple example using static electric and magnetic fields The proposal that electromagnetic momentum results from the motion of a relativistic mass contained in the fields is examined in the context of the corrected flow velocity. It is found that electromagnetic field momentum, though real, cannot be explained as due only to the motion of relativistic mass. The paper concludes that introducing the requirement of consistency with special relativity opens the study of electromagnetic energy and momentum to new possibilities.