Conservation laws—a simple application to the telegraph equation

• Published in: Journal of computational electronics Vol. 7; no. 2; pp. 47 - 51
• Main Authors: Nordbrock, Uwe, Kienzler, Reinhold
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.06.2008; Kluwer Academic Publishers; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Conservation laws; Construction equipment; Differential equations; Electrical Engineering; Electronics; Engineering; Exact sciences and technology; Existence theorems; General (including economical and industrial fields); Mathematical analysis; Mathematical and Computational Engineering; Mathematical and Computational Physics; Mathematical models; Mechanical Engineering; Optical and Electronic Materials; Theorems; Theoretical; Conservation laws; Neutral-Action method; Telegraph equation; Bessel function; Conservation law; Differential equation; Telegrapher equation
• ISSN: 1569-8025; 1572-8137
• DOI: 10.1007/s10825-008-0250-2

Conservation laws are a recognized tool in physical and engineering sciences. The classical procedure to construct conservation laws makes use of Noether’s Theorem. It requires the existence of a Lagrange-function for the system under consideration. Two unknown sets of functions have to be determined. A broader class of such laws is obtained, if Noether’s Theorem is applied together with the Bessel-Hagen extension, raising the number of sets of unknown functions to three. The same conservation laws can be obtained by using the Neutral-Action method with the advantage that only one set of unknown functions is required. Moreover, the Neutral-Action method is also applicable in the absence of a Lagrangian, since for this procedure only the governing differential equations are needed. By this, the Neutral-Action method appears to be the most useful tool in constructing conservation laws for systems with dissipation. The intention of this paper is to give a reference for further research on this topic rather than showing some detailed calculation on a special subject. Thus, the Neutral-Action method is introduced in detail and is applied to a simple example (the telegraph equation) to show the usefulness of this procedure for further applications in electronics.