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Experimentally confirming the special relativistic properties of Coulomb fields

The spatiotemporal profile of the electric field around a high-energy electron beam was visualized using an ultrafast technique based on electro-optic sampling. By investigating the formation of the Coulomb field it was possible to experimentally confirm the validity of the predictions of special relativity regarding electromagnetic fields.

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Fig. 1: Spatiotemporal evolution of the formation of a Coulomb field.

References

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This is a summary of: Ota, M. et al. Ultrafast visualization of an electric field under the Lorentz transformation. Nat. Phys. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01767-w (2022).

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Experimentally confirming the special relativistic properties of Coulomb fields. Nat. Phys. 18, 1404–1405 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01768-9

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