Applications of the Lorentz transformation

Abstract

In this chapter we shall examine some of the implications of the Lorentz transformation. The effects we shall discuss are completely outside normal everyday experience, since they only start to manifest themselves at velocities close to that of light (even an astronaut orbiting the earth is only moving with a speed ~2 × 10^-5c). Nevertheless the effects of the Lorentz transformation are part of the day to day experience for one small group in society—the high-energy physicists. We shall therefore start this chapter with a problem which occurs frequently in high-energy physics—the birth and death of a meson.