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UFN, 2008 Volume 178, Number 7, Pages 739–752 (Mi ufn620)

This article is cited in 2 papers

METHODOLOGICAL NOTES

Permutation asymmetry of the relativistic velocity addition law and non-Euclidean geometry

V. I. Ritus

P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract: The asymmetry of the relativistic addition law for noncollinear velocities under the velocity permutation leads to two modified triangles on a Euclidean plane depicting the addition of unpermuted and permuted velocities and the appearance of a nonzero angle $\omega$ between two resulting velocities. A particle spin rotates through the same angle $\omega$ under a Lorentz boost with a velocity noncollinear to the particle velocity. Three mutually connected three-parameter representations of the angle $\omega$, obtained by the author earlier, express the three-parameter symmetry of the sides and angles of two Euclidean triangles identical to the sine and cosine theorems for the sides and angles of a single geodesic triangle on the surface of a pseudosphere. Namely, all three representations of the angle $\omega$, after a transformation of one of them, coincide with the representations of the area of a pseudospherical triangle expressed in terms of any two of its sides and the angle between them. The angle $\omega$ is also symmetrically expressed in terms of three angles or three sides of a geodesic triangle, and therefore it is an invariant of the group of triangle motions over the pseudo-sphere surface, the group that includes the Lorentz group. Although the pseudospheres in Euclidean and pseudo-Euclidean spaces are locally isometric, only the latter is isometric to the entire Lobachevsky plane and forms a homogeneous isotropic curved 4-velocity space in the flat Minkowski space. In this connection, relativistic physical processes that may be related to the pseudosphere in Euclidean space are especially interesting.

PACS: 03.30.+p, 02.40.Ky

Received: April 14, 2008

DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.0178.200807d.0739


 English version:
Physics–Uspekhi, 2008, 51:7, 709–721

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© Steklov Math. Inst. of RAS, 2024