Radiation reaction in quantum field theory

Atsushi Higuchi

Published 2002-08-02, updated 2004-03-30Version 3

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 alpha and in the small h-bar 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. (Correction. Surface terms were erroneously discarded to arrive at Eq. (59). By correcting this error we find that the position shift according to the Lorentz-Dirac theory obtained from Eq. (12) is reproduced by quantum field theory in the hbar -> 0 limit. We also find that the small V(z) approximation is unnecessary for this agreement. See Sec. VII.)