Harte, Abraham I., Taylor, Peter ORCID: 0000-0002-8416-6408 and Flanagan, Éanna É. (2018) Foundations of the self-force problem in arbitrary dimensions. Physical Review D, 97 (12). p. 124053. ISSN 1550-7998
Abstract
The self-force problem—which asks how self-interaction affects a body’s motion—has been poorly studied for spacetime dimensions d≠4. We remedy this for all d≥3 by nonperturbatively constructing momenta such that forces and torques acting on extended, self-interacting electromagnetic charges have the same functional forms as their test body counterparts. The electromagnetic field which appears in the resulting laws of motion is not however the physical one, but a certain effective surrogate which we derive. For even d≥4, explicit momenta are identified such that this surrogate field satisfies the source-free Maxwell equations; laws of motion in these cases can be obtained similarly to those in the well-known four-dimensional Detweiler-Whiting prescription. For odd d, no analog of the Detweiler-Whiting prescription exists. Nevertheless, we derive its replacement. These general results are used to obtain explicit point-particle self-forces and self-torques in Minkowski spacetimes with various dimensions. Among various characteristics of the resulting equations, perhaps the most arresting is that an initially stationary charge which is briefly kicked in 2+1 dimensions asymptotically returns to rest.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article (Published) |
---|---|
Refereed: | Yes |
Additional Information: | Article number: 124053 |
Subjects: | Physical Sciences > Astronomy > Astrophysics |
DCU Faculties and Centres: | DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science and Health > School of Mathematical Sciences |
Publisher: | American Physical Society |
Official URL: | https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.124053 |
Copyright Information: | © 2018 American Physical Society (APS). |
Funders: | NSF Grant No. PHY-1707800. |
ID Code: | 27645 |
Deposited On: | 13 Apr 2023 13:06 by Peter Taylor . Last Modified 13 Apr 2023 13:06 |
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