Lagrangian for Maxwell's equations

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Lecture overview

Professor Susskind begins the lecture by solving Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic plane waves. He then uses the principles of action, locality and Lorentz invariance to develop the Lagrangian for electrodynamics for the special case without charges or currents. Using the Euler-Lagrange equations with this Lagrangian, he derives Maxwell's equations for this special case. Finally, Professor Susskind adds the Lagrangian term for charges and currents by using the principle of gauge invariance, and again uses the Euler-Lagrange equations to derive Maxwell's equations in relativistic notation.

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