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Ensembles of Particles

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Physics ((LNP,volume 826))

Abstract

Suppose a region of spacetime is occupied by a large number N of identical particles. Suppose that they possess a wide variety of momenta and that there are so many of them that their spacetime and momentum distribution may be taken as effectively continuous

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Notes

  1. 1.

    x 0 is not strictly a “time”. However, we shall assume here that hypersurfaces of constant x 0 are spacelike [which means \(\hbox{det}(g_{ij})>0\) and g 00 < 0] and that x 0 increases as one moves toward the future in any timelike direction.

  2. 2.

    After we have this, we may let \(\Sigma\) be any connected hypersurface that intersects completely the support of the vector density j ?, cutting all its flow lines an odd number of times. Then, \(\Sigma\) need not be spacelike, even in part.

  3. 3.

    Coordinate transformations can be shown to be canonical transformations, and hence the coordinate invariance of \(\hbox{d}^3{\user2{x}}\hbox{d}^3{\user2{p}}\) is a special case of this.

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Correspondence to Steven M. Christensen .

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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DeWitt, B., Christensen, S.M. (2011). Ensembles of Particles. In: Christensen, S. (eds) Bryce DeWitt's Lectures on Gravitation. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 826. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-36911-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-36911-0_7

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-36909-7

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