Wednesday 11 November 2015

classical mechanics - Invariance of Lagrangian in Noether's theorem


Often in textbooks Noether's theorem is stated with the assumption that the Lagrangian needs to be invariant $\delta L=0$.


However, given a lagrangian $L$, we know that the Lagrangians $\alpha L$ (where $\alpha$ is any constant) and $L + \frac{df}{dt}$ (where $f$ is any function) lead to the same equations of motion.


Can we then consider that the Lagrangian is invariant under a transformation if we find $\delta L=\alpha L$ or $\delta L=\frac{df}{dt}$ instead of $\delta L=0$?




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