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A visualisation of the Lorentz transformation. Only one space coordinate is

considered. The thin solid lines crossing at right angles depict the time and
distance coordinates of an observer at rest; the skewed solid straight lines depict
the coordinate grid of a moving observer.

In physics, the ‘



  converts between two different
observers' measurements of space and time, where one observer is in constant
motion with respect to the other. In classical physics ( Galilean relativity), the
only conversion believed necessary was 0' = 0 í
, describing how the origin of
one observer's coordinate system slides through space with respect to the
other's, at speed and along the 0-axis of each frame. According to special
relativity, this is only a good approximation at much smaller speeds than the
speed of light, and in general the result is not just an offsetting of the 0
coordinates; lengths and times are distorted as well.

If space is homogeneous, then the Lorentz transformation must be a linear

transformation. Also, since relativity postulates that the speed of light is the
same for all observers, it must preserve the spacetime interval between any two
events in Minkowski space. The Lorentz transformations describe only the
transformations in which the event at 0 = 0,
= 0 is left fixed, so they can be
considered as a rotation of Minkowski space. The more general set of
transformations that also includes translations is known as the Poincaré group.

Henri Poincaré named the Lorentz transformations after the Dutch physicist and
mathematician Hendrik Lorentz (1853±1928) in 1905.They form the
mathematical basis for Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. They were
derived by Joseph Larmor in 1897 and Lorentz (1899, 1904). In 1905 Einstein
derived them under the assumptions of the principle of relativity and the
constancy of the speed of light in any inertial referen ce frame.
ü
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Àc Lorentz transformation for frames in standard configuration
ñc 1.1 Matrix form
ñc 1.2 Rapidity
ñc 1.3 Hyperbolic trigonometric expressions
ñc 1.4 Hyperbolic rotation of coordinates
Àc General boosts
Àc Vpacetime interval
Àc Vpecial relativity
Àc The correspondence principle
Àc History
Àc Derivation
ñc A. From group postulates
oc 1 Coordinate transformations as a group
oc 2 Transformation matrices consistent with group
axioms
oc 3 Galilean transformations
oc 4 Lorentz transformations
ñc †. From Physical Principles
oc 1 Galilean reference frames
oc 2 Vpeed of light independent of the velocity of the
source
oc 3 Principle of relativity
oc 4 Expression of the Lorentz transformation

Àc References

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Vtandard configuration of coordinate systems for Lorentz transformations.

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Views of spacetime along the world line of a rapidly accelerating observer
moving in a 1-dimensional (straight line) "universe". The vertical direction
indicates time, accelerates.
Assume there are two observers  and , each using their own Cartesian
coordinate system to measure space and time intervals.  uses (
,0,,) and
uses (
',0',','). Assume further that the coordinate systems are oriented so that
the 0-axis and the 0 -axis overlap, the -axis is parallel to the  -axis, as are the
-axis and the  -axis.
The relative velocity between the two observers is along the common 0-axis.
Also assume that the origins of both coordinate systems are the same. If all
these hold, then the coordinate systems are said to be in 

 
  .
A symmetric presentation between the forward Lorentz Transformation and the
inverse Lorentz Transformation can be achieved if coordinate systems are in
symmetric configuration. The symmetric form highlights that all physical laws
should be of such a kind while the horizontal indicates distance, the dashed line
is the spacetime trajectory ("world line") of the observer. The small dots are
specific events in spacetime. I
f one imagines these events to be the flashing of a light, then the events that
pass the two diagonal lines in the bottom half of the image (the past light cone
of the observer in the origin) are the events visible to the observer.
The slope of the world line (devia tion from being vertical) gives the relative
velocity to the observer.

Note how the view of spacetime changes when the observer

that they remain unchanged under a Lorentz transformation.

The Lorentz transformation for frames in standard configuration can be shown to be:

where is called the Lorentz factorc

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This Lorentz transformation is called a "boost" in the 0-direction and is often
expressed in matrix form as

More generally for a boost in an arbitrary direction (ȕ 0,ȕ,ȕ),

where and .

Note that this is only the "boost", i.e. a transformation between two frames in
relative motion.

†ut the most general proper Lorentz transformation also contains a rotation of
the three axes.

This boost alone is given by a symmetric matrix. †ut the gener al Lorentz
transformation matrix is not symmetric .
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The Lorentz transformation can be cast into another useful form by introducing
a ×


called the rapidity (an instance of hyperbolic angle) through the
equation:

Equivalently:

Then the Lorentz transformation in standard configuration is:

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It can also be shown that:

and therefore,

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Vubstituting these expressions into the matrix form of the transformation, we
have:

Thus, the Lorentz transformation can be seen as a hyperbolic rotation of

coordinates in Minkowski space, where the rapidity ij represents the hyperbolic
angle of rotation.

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For a boost in an arbitrary direction with velocity , it is convenient to decompose the spatial
vector into components perpendicular and parallel to the velocity : . Then
only the component in the direction of is 'warped' by the gamma factor:

where now . The second of these can be written as:

These equations can be expressed in matrix form as

where › is the identity matrix, P is velocity written as a column vector and PT is its transpose
(a row vector).
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In a given coordinate system (09), if two events  and  are separated by

the spacetime interval between them is given by

This can be written in another form using the Minkowski metric. In this
coordinate system,

Then, we can write

or, using the Einstein summation convention,

Now suppose that we make a coordinate transformation . Then, the

interval in this coordinate system is given by

or
It is a result of special relativity that the interval is an invariant. That is,
. It can be shown[4] that this requires the coordinate transformation to
be of the form

Here, is a constant vector and a constant matrix, where we require that

Vuch a transformation is called a º

 



 or an

  
  

 


. The  represents a space-time translation. When
, the transformation is called an 
    

 


,
or simply a   

 


.

Taking the determinant of gives us

Lorentz transformations with are called ×
×
‘





 . They consist of spatial rotations and boosts and form a
subgroup of the Lorentz group. Those with are called

×
×
‘



  and consist of (discrete) space and time
reflections combined with spatial rotations and boosts. They don't for m a
subgroup, as the product of any two improper Lorentz transformations will be a
proper Lorentz transformation.

The composition of two Poincaré transformations is a Poincaré transformation

and the set of all Poincaré transformations with the operation of composition
forms a group called the Poincaré group. Under the Erlangen program,
Minkowski space can be viewed as the geometry defined by the Poincaré group,
which combines Lorentz transformations with translations. In a similar way, the
set of all Lorentz transformations forms a group, called the Lorentz group.

A quantity invariant under Lorentz transformations is known as a Lorentz

scalar.
ü c c
One of the most astounding consequences of Einstein's clock-setting
method is the idea that time is relative. In essence, each observer's
frame of reference is associated with a unique set of clocks, the result
being that time passes at different rates for different observers. This
was a direct result of the Lorentz transformations and is called time
dilation. We can also clearly see from the Lorentz "local time"
transformation that the concept of the relativity of simultaneity and of
the relativity of length contraction are also consequences of that
clock-setting hypothesis.

Lorentz transformations can also be used to prove that magnetic and

electric fields are simply different aspects of the same force ² the
electromagnetic force. If we have one charge or a collection of
charges which are all stationary with respect to each other, we can
observe the system in a frame in which there is no motion of the
charges. In this frame, there is only an "electric field". If we switch to
a moving frame, the Lorentz transformation will predict that a
"magnetic field" is present. This field was initially unified in
Maxwell's concept of the "electromagnetic field".

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For relative speeds much less than the speed of light, the Lorentz
transformations reduce to the Galilean transformation in accordance
with the correspondence principle. The correspondence limit is
usually stated mathematically as , so it is usually said that non
relativistic physics is a physics of "instant action at a distance"
.

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The transformations were first discovered and published by Joseph Larmor in
1897. In 1905, Henri Poincaré named them after the Dutch physicist and
mathematician Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) who had published a first
order version of these transformations in 1895 and the final version in 1899 and
1904.

Many physicists, including FitzGerald, Larmor, Lorentz and Woldemar Voigt,

had been discussing the physics behind these equations since 1887 . Larmor and
Lorentz, who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, were seeking the
transformations under which Maxwell's equations were invariant when
transformed from the ether to a moving frame. In early 1889, Heaviside had
shown from Maxwell's equations that the electric field surrounding a spherical
distribution of charge should cease to have spherical symmetry once the charge
is in motion relative to the ether. FitzGerald then conjectured that Heaviside¶s
distortion result might be applied to a theory of intermolecular forces. Vome
months later, FitzGerald published his conjecture in V
 to explain the
baffling outcome of the 1887 ether -wind experiment of Michelson and Morley.
This became known as the FitzGerald -Lorentz explanation of the Michelson -
Morley null result, known early on through the writings of Lodge, Lorentz,
Larmor, and FitzGerald. Their explanation was widely accepted as correct
before 1905. Larmor gets credit for discovering the basic equations in 1897 and
for being first in understanding the crucial time dilation property inherent in his
equations.

Larmor's (1897) and Lorentz's (1899, 1904) final equations are algebraically
equivalent to those published and interpreted as a theory of relativity by Albert
Einstein (1905) but it was the French mathematician Henri Poincaré who first
recognized that the Lorentz transformations have the properties of a
mathematical group. †oth Larmor and Lorentz discovered that the
transformation preserved Maxwell's equations. Paul Langevin (1911) said of the
transformation:

"It is the great merit of H. A. Lorentz to have seen that the fundamental
equations of electromagnetism admit a group of transformations which
enables them to have the same form when one passes from one frame of
reference to another; this new transformatio n has the most profound
implications for the transformations of space and time".

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The usual treatment (e.g., Einstein's original work) is based on the invariance of
the speed of light. However, this is not necessarily the starting point: indeed (as
is exposed, for example, in the second volume of the Course in Theoretical
Physics by Landau and Lifshitz), what is really at stake is the à Ã

 of
interactions: one supposes that the influence that one particle, say, exerts on
another can not be transmitted instantaneously. Hence, there exists a theoretical
maximal speed of information tra nsmission which must be invariant, and it
turns out that this speed coincides with the speed of light in vacuum. The need
for locality in physical theories was already noted by Newton (see Koestler's
"The Vleepwalkers"), who considered the notion of an act ion at a distance
"philosophically absurd" and believed that gravity must be transmitted by an
agent (interstellar aether) which obeys certain physical laws.

Michelson and Morley in 1887 designed an experiment, which employed an

interferometer and a half-silvered mirror, that was accurate enough to detect
aether flow. The mirror system reflected the light back into the interferometer.
If there were an aether drift, it would produce a phase shift and a change in the
interference that would be detected. Howev er, given the results were negative,
rather than validating the aether, based upon the findings aether was not
confirmed. This was a major step in science that eventually resulted in
Einstein's Vpecial Theory of Relativity.

In a 1964 paper, [15] Erik Christopher Zeeman showed that the causality
preserving property, a condition that is weaker in a mathematical sense than the
invariance of the speed of light, is enough to assure that the coordinate
transformations are the Lorentz transformations.

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Following is a classical derivation based on group postu lates and isotropy

Of the space:

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ccc 
c

cccccccThe coordinate transformations between inertial frames form a group (called the proper
Lorentz group) with the group operation being the composition of transformations
(performing one transformation after another). Indeed the four group axioms are apparently
satisfied:

1.c Closure: the composition of two transformations is a transformation: consider a

composition of transformations from the inertial frame A to inertial frame A', (denoted
as ), and then from A' to inertial frame A'', ; apparently there
exists a transformation, , directly from an inertial frame A to inertial
frame A''.
2.c Associativity: the result of and
is apparently the same, .
3.c Identity element: there is an identity element, a transformation .
4.c Inverse element: for any transformation there apparently exists an inverse
transformation .

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If then we get the Galilean-Newtonian kinematics with the Galilean

transformation,

Where time is absolute,
' =
, and the relative velocity of two inertial frames is not
limited.

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 If is negative, then we set which becomes the invariant speed, the speed of

light in vacuum. This yields and thus we get special relativity with Lorentz
transformation.

Where the speed of light is a finite universal constant determining the highest possible
relative velocity between inertial frames.

If the Galilean transformation is a good approximation to the Lorentz transformation.

Only experiment can answer the question which of the two possibilities, ț = 0 or ț < 0, is
realised in our world. The experiments measuring the speed of light, first performed by a
Danish physicist Ole Rømer, show that it is finite, and the Michelson±Morley experiment
showed that it is an absolute speed, and thus that ț < 0.



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The problem is usually restricted to two dimensions by using a velocity along the x axis such
that the y and z coordinates do not intervene. It is similar to that of Einstein.More details may
be found in As in the Galilean transformation, the Lorentz transformation is linear : the
relative velocity of the reference frames is constant. They are called inertial or Galilean
reference frames. According to relativity no Galilean reference frame is privileged. Another
condition is that the speed of light must be independent of the reference frame, in practice of
the velocity of the light source.

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In classical kinematics, the total displacement x in the R frame is the sum of the relative
displacement x' in frame R' and of the displacement x in frame R. If v is the relative velocity
of R' relative to R, we have v : x = x¶+vt or x¶=x-vt. This relationship is linear for a constant
v, that is when R and R' are Galilean frames of reference.

In Einstein's relativity, the main difference with Galilean relativity is that space is a function
of time and vice-versa: t  t¶. The most general linear relationship is obtained with four
constant coefficients, Į, ȕ, Ȗ and v:
The Lorentz transformation becomes the Galilan transformation when ȕ = Ȗ = 1 and Į = 0.


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Using the relation

obtained earlier, one has :

and, finally:

We have now all the coefficients needed and, therefore, the Lorentz transformation :

The P
 Lorentz transformation writes, using the Lorentz factor Ȗ:

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1.c l The reference is within the following paper: Poincaré, Henri (1905), "Vur la dynamique
de l'électron", 

  

    Ã

 V
 

: 1504±1508
2.c l Larmor, J. (1897), "A dynamical theory of the electric and luminiferous medium ²
Part III: Relations with material media", º
à  
Ã

 
   ÃV 



: 205±300, doi:10.1098/rsta.1897.0020

l Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1899), "Vimplified theory of electrical and optical phenomena in
moving systems", º V
 


›: 427±443; and Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon
(1904), "Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity less than that of
light", º V
 


› : 669±678c

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