Subtleties of Invariance, Covariance and Observer Independence

Abstract

The role of the observers is frequently obscured in the literature, either by writing equations in a coordinate system implicitly pertaining to some specific observer or by entangling the invariance and the observer dependence of physical quantities. Using examples in relativistic kinematics and classical electrodynamics we clarify the confusion underlying these misconceptions.

15 pages, revised, published version

References in corpus (3)

• The Proof that the Standard Transformations of E and B are not the Lorentz Transformations. Clifford Algebra Formalism
• Rotation of the swing plane of Foucault's pendulum and Thomas spin precession: Two faces of one coin
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• On the various aspects of electromagnetic potentials in spacetimes with symmetries
• Does three dimensional electromagnetic field inherit the spacetime symmetries?