5.6 Time symmetry

In the case of a time symmetry, we have \(f_i=0\) and \(g=1\):

\begin{align} t'=t+\delta \epsilon \tag{5.20}\end{align}

This gives the conserved quantity:

\begin{align} Q=\sum_{i=1}^np_i\dot{q}_i-L \tag{5.21}\end{align}

We have already seen that when the Lagrangian does not explicitly depend on time, the quantity:

\begin{align} h=\sum_{i=1}^np_i\dot{q}_i-L \tag{5.22}\end{align}

is conserved. Of course, if the Lagrangian does not depend on time, then the action will be invariant to a time translation.