Paper 4, Section II, B
The motion of a particle of charge and mass in an electromagnetic field with scalar potential and vector potential is characterized by the Lagrangian
(i) Write down the Hamiltonian of the particle.
(ii) Write down Hamilton's equations of motion for the particle.
(iii) Show that Hamilton's equations are invariant under the gauge transformation
for an arbitrary function .
(iv) The particle moves in the presence of a field such that and , where are Cartesian coordinates and is a constant.
(a) Find a gauge transformation such that only one component of remains non-zero.
(b) Determine the motion of the particle.
(v) Now assume that varies very slowly with time on a time-scale much longer than . Find the quantity which remains approximately constant throughout the motion.
[You may use the expression for the action variable .]