Accelerated reference frame

In theoretical physics, an accelerated reference frame is usually a coordinate system or frame of reference, that undergoes a constant and continual change in velocity over time as judged from an inertial frame.

An object in an accelerated frame will usually be compelled to move with the frame by a fictitious force. If this force is applied mechanically to one part of the object, the transmission of this "holding force" through the object will make the object seem to feel accelerational "g-forces" as if it were suspended in a gravitational field.

Classic point of view

Acceleration in a straight line

When a car accelerates hard, the common human response is to feel "pushed back into the seat." In an inertial frame of reference attached to the road, there is no actual force moving the rider backward, but in the rider's reference frame attached to the car, there is a backward fictitious force. We mention two possible ways of analyzing the problem:

# From the viewpoint of an inertial reference frame with constant velocity matching the initial motion of the car, the car is accelerating. In order for the passenger to stay inside the car, a force must be exerted on him. This force is exerted by the seat, which has started to move forward with the car and compressed against the passenger until it transmits the full force to keep the passenger inside. Thus the passenger is accelerating in this frame, due to the unbalanced force of the seat.
# From the point of view of the interior of the car, an accelerating reference frame, there is a fictitious force pushing the passenger backwards, with magnitude equal to the mass of the passenger times the acceleration of the car. This force pushes the passenger back into the seat, until the seat compresses and provides an equal and opposite force. Thereafter, the passenger is stationary in this frame, because the fictitious force and the (real) force of the seat are balanced.

This serves as an illustration of the manner in which fictitious forces arise from switching to a non-inertial reference frame. Calculations of physical quantities made in any frame give the same answers, but in some cases calculations are easier to make in a non-inertial frame. (In this simple example, the calculations are equally easy in either of the two frames described.)

Circular motion

A similar effect occurs in circular motion, circular for the standpoint of an inertial frame of reference attached to the road, with the fictitious force called the centrifugal force, which is apparent in a non-inertial frame of reference. If a car is moving at constant speed around a circular section of road, the occupants will feel pushed outside, away from the center of the turn. Again the situation can be viewed from inertial or non-inertial frames:

# From the viewpoint of an inertial reference frame stationary with respect to the road, the car is accelerating toward the center of the circle. This is called centripetal acceleration and requires a centripetal force to maintain the motion. This force is maintained by the friction of the wheels on the road. The car is accelerating, due to the unbalanced force, which causes it to move in a circle.
# From the viewpoint of a rotating frame, moving with the car, there is a fictitious centrifugal force that tends to push the car toward the outside of the road (and the occupants toward the outside of the car). The centrifugal force is balanced by the acceleration of the tires inward, making the car stationary in this non-inertial frame.

To consider another example, taking as our reference frame the surface of the rotating earth, centrifugal force reduces the apparent force of gravity by about one part in a thousand, depending on latitude. This is zero at the poles, maximum at the equator.

Another fictitious force that arises in the case of circular motion is the Coriolis force, which is ordinarily visible only in very large-scale motion like the projectile motion of long-range guns or the circulation of the earth's atmosphere. Neglecting air resistance, an object dropped from a 50 m high tower at the equator will fall 7.7 mm eastward of the spot below where it was dropped because of the Coriolis force.ref|tower

Both the centrifugal and the Coriolis force are needed to explain the motion of distant objects relative to rotating reference frames. Consider a distant star observed from a rotating spacecraft. In the reference frame co-rotating with the spacecraft the distant star appears to rotate around the spacecraft. The apparent motion of the star requires a fictitious centripetal force acting on the star. Just like in the example of the car in circular motion above, the centrifugal force acting on the star has the same magnitude as the centripetal force, but is directed in the opposite direction.

In this case the Coriolis force has twice the magnitude of the centrifugal force and is directed oppositely to the centrifugal force. Centrifuge force is a position-dependent field. The farther from the rotation center, the bigger the force. Coriolis is a speed dependent field. The faster we see a travelling object, the bigger the force. This has to be like this because objects rotating with our frame will feel only the centrifugal force, while objects static on the outside, will move respect to us and will feel the coriolis to compensate the centrifugal force.

Fictitious forces and work

Fictitious forces can be considered to do work, provided that they move an object on a trajectory that changes its energy from potential to kinetic. For example, consider a person in a rotating chair holding a weight in his outstretched arm. If he pulls his arm inward, from the perspective of his rotating reference frame he has done work against centrifugal force. If he now lets go of the weight, from his perspective it spontaneously flies outward, because centrifugal force has done work on the object, converting its potential energy into kinetic. From an inertial viewpoint, of course, the object flies away from him because it is suddenly allowed to move in a straight line. This illustrates that the work done, like the total potential and kinetic energy of an object, can be different in a non-inertial frame than an inertial one.

Relativistic point of view

Frames and flat spacetime

If a region of spacetime is declared to be Euclidean, and effectively free from obvious gravitational fields, then if an accelerated coordinate system is overlaid onto the same region, it can be said that a uniform fictitious field exists in the accelerated frame (we reserve the word gravitational for the case in which a mass is involved). An object accelerated to be stationary in the accelerated frame will "feel" the presence of the field, and they will also be able to see environmental matter with inertial states of motion (stars, galaxies, etc.) to be apparently falling "downwards" in the field along curved trajectories as if the field is real.

In frame-based descriptions, this supposed field can be made to appear or disappear by switching between "accelerated" and "inertial" coordinate systems.

More advanced descriptions

As the situation is modeled in finer detail, using the general principle of relativity, the concept of a frame-dependent gravitational field becomes less realistic. In these Machian models, the accelerated body can agree that the apparent gravitational field is "associated" with the motion of the background matter, but can also claim that the motion of the material "as if" there is a gravitational field, "causes" the gravitational field - the accelerating background matter "drags light". Similarly, a background observer can argue that the forced acceleration of the mass causes an apparent gravitational field in the region between it and the environmental material (the accelerated mass also "drags light"). This "mutual" effect, and the ability of an accelerated mass to warp lightbeam geometry and lightbeam-based coordinate systems, is referred to as frame-dragging.

Frame-dragging removes the usual distinction between accelerated frames (which show gravitational effects) and inertial frames (where the geometry is supposedly free from gravitational fields). When a forcibly-accelerated body physically "drags" a coordinate system, the problem becomes an exercise in warped spacetime for all observers.

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