Paper detail

Spatial contraction of the Poincare group and Maxwell's equations in the electric limit

The contraction of the Poincare group with respect to the space trans- lations subgroup gives rise to a group that bears a certain duality relation to the Galilei group, that is, the contraction limit of the Poincare group with respect to the time translations subgroup. In view of this duality, we call the former the dual Galilei group. A rather remarkable feature of the dual Galilei group is that the time translations constitute a central subgroup. Therewith, in unitary irreducible representations (UIR) of the group, the Hamiltonian appears as a Casimir operator proportional to the identity H = EI, with E (and a spin value s) uniquely characterizing the representation. Hence, a physical system characterized by a UIR of the dual Galilei group displays no non-trivial time evolution. Moreover, the combined U(1) gauge group and the dual Galilei group underlie a non- relativistic limit of Maxwell's equations known as the electric limit. The analysis presented here shows that only electrostatics is possible for the electric limit, wholly in harmony with the trivial nature of time evolution governed by the dual Galilei group.