2002/08/31 by Atsushi Higuchi · 34 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Anomalous magnetic dipole moment #Charged particle #Classical electromagnetism #Compton scattering #Compton wavelength #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cyclotron radiation #Electromagnetic radiation #Electron #Fine-structure constant #Magnetic radiation reaction force #Physics #Point particle #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Wave packet #gr-qc #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.105004
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 66(10) (American Physical Society) · 13 pages, RevTeX, no figures. An error is corrected: the Lorentz-Dirac theory is reproduced by quantum field theory as a result
openalex publication_date 2002/11/12 · arxiv created 2004/03/30 · arxiv updated 2014/11/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate radiation-reaction effects for a charged scalar particle accelerated by an external potential realized as a space-dependent mass term in quantum electrodynamics. In particular, we calculate the position shift of the final-state wave packet of the charged particle due to radiation at lowest order in the fine structure constant \ensuremathα and in the small \ensuremath\Elzxh approximation. We show that it disagrees with the result obtained using the Lorentz-Dirac formula for the radiation-reaction force, and that it agrees with the classical theory if one assumes that the particle loses its energy to radiation at each moment of time according to the Larmor formula in the static frame of the potential. However, the discrepancy is much smaller than the Compton wavelength of the particle. We also point out that the electromagnetic correction to the potential has no classical limit.