Andrew Steane
Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK
Date
1 October2014
Host
Jonathan Home
Title
The Impossible Electron: Understanding the Paradoxes of Self-Force
Abstract
Charged objects exert a non-zero net force on themselves - a phenomenon called “self-force” which appears to, but in fact does not, break Newton’s third law of motion. It does give rise to some lovely physical paradoxes, however, involving self-acceleration, levitation, and energy production at no cost. All these oddities go away when we learn that there is no such thing as a point-like charged particle with finite mass. The lecture will shed light on a century of confusion, and present some recent results on the relativistic motion of dipoles and spheres, and the impact of Unruh radiation on quantum interference.