Universal Self Force from an Extended-Object Approach

Original · EN

We present a consistent extended-object approach for determining the self force acting on an accelerating charged particle. In this approach one considers an extended charged object of finite size ε, and calculates the overall contribution of the mutual electromagnetic forces. Previous implementations of this approach yielded divergent terms ∝ 1/ε that could not be cured by mass-renormalization. Here we explain the origin of this problem and fix it. We obtain a consistent, universal, expression for the extended-object self force, which conforms with Dirac's well known formula.