Abstract
We consider the motion of charged point particles on Minkowski spacetime. The questions of whether the self-force is finite and whether mass renormalisation is necessary are discussed within three theories: In the standard Maxwell vacuum theory, in the non-linear Born-Infeld theory and in the higher-order Bopp-Podolsky theory. In a final section we comment on possible implications for the theory of the self-force in gravity.
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Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Grant LA905/10-1, and by the German-Israeli-Foundation, Grant 1078/2009. Moreover, I gratefully acknowledge support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the Research Training Group 1620 “Models of Gravity”. As to the part on Bopp-Podolsky theory, I wish to thank Robin Tucker and Jonathan Gratus for many helpful discussions and for the ongoing collaboration on this subject. Finally, I am grateful to the organisers of the Heraeus-Seminar “Equations of motion in relativistic gravity” for inviting this contribution.
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Perlick, V. (2015). On the Self-force in Electrodynamics and Implications for Gravity. In: Puetzfeld, D., Lämmerzahl, C., Schutz, B. (eds) Equations of Motion in Relativistic Gravity. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 179. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18335-0_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18335-0_15
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