2025/04/16 by Abraham I. Harte, Harte, Abraham I., Francisco M. Blanco +3 · 3 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Nonlocal and gradient elasticity in micro/nano structures #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.11912
openalex publication_date 2025/04/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In electromagnetism, linearized general relativity, and other contexts, previous work has shown that the laws of motion which govern compact, self-interacting bodies can be obtained by applying "Detweiler-Whiting prescriptions" to the laws of motion which govern test bodies. These prescriptions replace any field which appears in a test-body law of motion with a certain effective field which is a quasilocal functional of the physical variables -- a functional that can be interpreted as a regularization procedure in a point-particle limit. We generalize these results, presenting a formalism which allows Detweiler-Whiting prescriptions to be be directly derived for extended bodies, even in nonlinear field theories. If a generating functional with particular properties can be constructed, we find effective linear and angular momenta which evolve via Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations involving appropriate effective fields. These equations implicitly incorporate all self-force, self-torque, and extended-body effects. Although our main focus is on bodies coupled to nonlinear scalar fields, we also remark on the gravitational case.