TITLE:
The Rise and Fall of the Electromagnetic 4-Potential
AUTHORS:
Eliahu Comay
KEYWORDS:
Special Relativity, Maxwellian Electrodynamics, The Variational Principle, Quantum Theories, 4-Potential
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.5 No.11,
November
19,
2018
ABSTRACT: The Lienard-Wiechert 4-potential depends on local coordinates and on re-tarded coordinates of a charge at the source. Therefore, the 4-potential of incoming radiation fields (namely, a photon) cannot be written as a 4-vector which satisfies the locality requirement of fields of a Lagrangian density. This unsolvable problem is the underlying reason for the extremely unusual phenomenon where respectable textbooks make contradictory statements concerning whether the electromagnetic 4-potential is a 4-vector. Moreover, an analysis of well-established experimental data proves that radiation fields and bound fields are inherently different physical objects. These results indicate that the present form of quantum electrodynamics should be revised. It is further proved that in both cases the 4-potential is not a fundamental element of electrodynamics but an auxiliary quantity. For this reason, there are problems with some specific theoretical ideas that pertain to the 4-potential, like gauge transformations, the Dirac monopole theory and the Aharonov-Bohm effects.