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General Approach to Computing Velocity of frames in Special Relativity?

Physics Asked by stanfordude on January 31, 2021

I’ve been self studying some special relativity by reading some textbooks, and I’m somewhat confused about the process of computing velocities. The book I’m reading primarily identifies computation of velocities by just carrying out the boost operators, but the general case remains unclear.

If you have a reference frame $pmatrix{x & t}$ at rest, and another reference frame $pmatrix{x’ & t’}$ moving with respect to the other frame, and you have coordinate equations $x'(x,t)$ and $t'(x,t)$ relating the one frame to the other, how do you compute the relative velocity of the $pmatrix{x’& t’}$ frame with respect to the $pmatrix{x & t}$ frame?

I’m struggling with some of the semantics, so maybe some elaboration on intuition might be appreciated too. Thanks.

One Answer

Since for a boost $$ left( begin{array}{c} t' x' end{array} right) = left( begin{array}{cc} gamma & gamma v gamma v & gamma end{array} right) left( begin{array}{c} t x end{array} right), $$ given $$ left( begin{array}{c} t' x' end{array} right) = left( begin{array}{cc} A & B B & A end{array} right) left( begin{array}{c} t x end{array} right), $$ where $det(M)=A^2-B^2=1$,
the relative velocity is $$frac{B}{A}=frac{gamma v}{gamma}=v.$$

Answered by robphy on January 31, 2021

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