MG12 - Talk detail
 

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Abstract

Effects of the singular self-field on the motion of an extended charge

A simple method is developed to understand scalar and electromagnetic self-forces and self-torques on extended bodies in curved spacetimes. Symmetry arguments are shown to be sufficient to demonstrate that these effects are dominated by the so-called "regular" component of a body's self-field. The remaining (much larger) portion of the self-field is still interesting, however. Most its effects act to renormalize the body's linear and angular momenta. In many cases it also shifts the apparent quadrupole and higher moments of the body's stress-energy tensor. These couple to the background metric, so both the body's inertial and (passive) gravitational mass distributions are affected.

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