Despite its simplicity, classical mechanics is not taught well in the typical physics curriculum. This is unfortunate because the general philosophy of constructing Lagrangians based on symmetries underlies all of modern physics. In this article, I explain basic Lagrangian mechanics in a systematic way starting from fundamental physical principles. It basically follows Landau and Lifshitz Vol. 1 but ties up some loose ends.
Principle of stationary action
Classical mechanics describes the motion of objects modeled as point particles. First, consider a single particle in empty space. At any given time, it has a position and velocity
.
Define a quantity that depends on the path of the particle
from time
to
. The principle of stationary action, or action principle, states that the path the particle actually takes is one where the action is stable to small perturbations in the path
.
To elaborate, consider dividing the time interval from to
into
segments, and take
in the end. You may think of
as a function of many variables
, where
. (Note that the velocity
, so it is not an independent variable here.) Such a “function of a function” is called a functional. The principle of stationary action is then
, i.e. the partial derivative of
with respect to any component of the position
at any time
is zero. The
symbol is generally used instead of
for functional derivatives.
Finally, the action principle only applies to perturbations that are zero at the boundaries: . This will become important later.
The Lagrangian
Consider the action for time
to
, and the action
for time
to
, with
. We require locality in time, meaning that a perturbation in the first interval only affects
and not
. Also, we assume additivity of the action:
. These conditions imply that
can be written as an integral from
to
of some quantity:
.
is known as the Lagrangian. In general, it may depend on the position and velocity at time
, as well as the time
itself1.
Note that we may add a total time derivative to the Lagrangian without affecting the principle of stationary action. Such a term produces the action:
by the fundamental theorem of calculus. The perturbation is zero at the boundaries by definition, so does not affect this action.
Let us now derive the form of the Lagrangian based on some other fundamental principles:
Homogeneity of space and time. No point in space or time is any different from any other, so the Lagrangian cannot depend on or
explicitly.
Isotropy of space. No direction in space is different from any other, so the Lagrangian can only depend on the magnitude (squared) of the velocity .
Galilean invariance. The theory should be invariant under shifts by a constant velocity, . In other words, there is no universal stationary frame of reference. Taking the time derivative, this is
. To first order in
, the Lagrangian changes as
The term will not affect the physics if it is a total time derivative of the form above. This only occurs if
is a constant. Call this constant
. Thus, the Lagrangian for a single particle in free space is:
. The constant
is, of course, the mass.
To summarize, we derived the unique action and Lagrangian (up to a total time derivative) for a single particle from the following postulates:
- Locality in time
- Additivity of the action
- Homogeneity of space and time
- Isotropy of space
- Galilean invariance
Multiple particles
Now consider the -particle case. The Lagrangian may generally depend on all the positions and velocities
. Following the postulates above, it must take the form2:
where the function depends on all the separations between the particles
.
Euler-Lagrange equations
Let us now apply the principle of stationary action to the action:
Plugging in the variation for particle
, and expanding to first order in
, we get:
where is the gradient of
with respect to
. Using
, we can integrate the first term by parts, discarding the boundary term
since
at the boundaries. We obtain:
where . The equations obtained using the action principle are known as Euler-Lagrange equations or equations of motion. In this case, we have found Newton’s law for a conservative potential:
Beyond classical mechanics
Finally, it is interesting to see how the postulates above are modified in quantum and relativistic theories.
- Principle of stationary action. In quantum physics, the particle takes all paths instead of only the classical one! The quantum amplitude is given by summing up
over all paths. This is known as a path integral.
- Locality in time gets promoted to locality in space and time in field theory.
- Additivity of the action remains the same.
- Homogeneity of space and time remains the same.
- Isotropy of space remains the same.
- Galilean invariance is promoted to Lorentz invariance in relativity. Lorentz transformations relate space and time.
In modern theories, there are often additional symmetry principles that constrain the Lagrangian, such as gauge invariance and conformal invariance.
1 It also cannot depend on higher time derivatives due to the Ostrogradsky instability.
2 A term like with
is possible, but would imply that particles infinitely far away can affect each other, violating common sense (or, if you like, the cluster decomposition principle).