Textbook treatments of the Galilean covariance of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a spinless particle seem invariably to cover the case of a free particle or one in the presence of a scalar potential. The principal objective of this paper is to examine the situation in the case of arbitrary forces, including the velocity-dependent variety resulting from a vector potential. To this end, we revisit the 1964 theorem of Jauch which purports to determine the most general form of the Hamiltonian consistent with “Galilean-invariance,” and argue that the proof is less than compelling. We then show systematically that the Schrödinger equation in the case of a Jauch-type Hamiltonian is Galilean covariant, so long as the vector and scalar potentials transform in a certain way. These transformations, which to our knowledge have appeared very rarely in the literature on quantum mechanics, correspond in the case of electrodynamical forces to the “magnetic” nonrelativistic limit of Maxwell’s equations in the sense of Le Bellac and Lévy-Leblond (1973). Finally, this Galilean covariant theory sheds light on Feynman’s “proof” of Maxwell’s equations, as reported by Dyson in 1990.
We investigate certain invariance properties of quantum fluids subject to a nonlinear gauge potential. In particular, we derive the covariant transformation laws for the nonlinear potentials under a space-time Galilean boost and consider
U(1) gauge transformations. We find that the hydrodynamic canonical field equations are form-invariant in the case of external gauge functions $\ensuremath{\chi}(\mathbf{r},t)$, but not for nonlinear gauge functionals $\ensuremath{\chi}[\ensuremath{\rho}]$. Hence, nonlinear gauge potentials are nontrivial potentials which may not be ``gauged-away.'' Notably, for a superfluid in dimension
d=1, attempting to do so generates the gauge pressure of the fluid in the Hamiltonian density. Furthermore, we investigate how the field equations transform under arbitrary Galilean transformations. We find that the immediate lack of Galilean covariance is restored under a suitably chosen transformation rule set for the potentials, which is identical in form to that of a Schr\"odinger particle coupled to external scalar and vector potentials.