Nonlocal Lagrangians for accelerated systems

Acceleration-induced nonlocality and the corresponding Lorentz-invariant nonlocal field equations of accelerated systems in Minkowski spacetime are discussed. Under physically reasonable conditions, the nonlocal equation of motion of the field can be derived from a variational principle of stationary action involving a nonlocal Lagrangian that is simply obtained by composing the local inertial Lagrangian with the nonlocal transformation of the field to the accelerated system. The implications of this approach for the electromagnetic and Dirac fields are briefly discussed. (c) 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.