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Can the Lorenz-gauge potentials be considered physical quantities?

2010; IOP Publishing; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/0143-0807/31/2/008

1361-6404

José A. Heras, Guillermo Fernández‐Anaya,

Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics

Two results support the idea that the scalar and vector potentials in the Lorenz gauge can be considered to be physical quantities: (i) they separately satisfy the properties of causality and propagation at the speed of light and not imply spurious terms and (ii) they can naturally be written in a manifestly covariant form.In this paper we introduce expressions for the Lorenzgauge potentials at the present time in terms of electric and magnetic fields at the retarded time.These expressions provide a third result in favor of a physical interpretation of the Lorenz-gauge potentials: (iii) they can be regarded as causal effects of the observed electric and magnetic fields.