Friday, May 25, 2018

electromagnetism - Electron Electric Field Mass?


I am confused of whether or not the expected electromagnetic field generated by the point-like electric charge of the electron distributed smoothly across space as a probability distribution creates the presence of an effective field mass.


I know that the probability current of the electron is γ0k, which is conserved. Multiplying the probability current of the electron by its total charge q gives the charge current density Jk=qγ0k. From the current I can calculate the expected four-potential field as Ak(r,t)=Jk(r,tc/r)|rr|d3r.



From Ak I can calculate the expected electromagnetic fields as Fjk=jAkkAj. Finally I can calculate the expected electromagnetic energy as Ueff=18πFjkFjkd3r.

Applying Einstein's relation energy is proportional to mass, I get the following effect field mass of the electron as Meff=Ueffc2.


Is Meff a real observable? I was unable to find an analytic solution for Meff, however I did compute Meff for Gaussian distributed probability functions for the electron with varying standard deviation (spacial localization), and I noticed that for standard deviations of the order of 1010 meters (lattice size), Meff was very small in comparison to the electron's rest mass. When the standard deviation was 1015 meters (nucleus size), the Meff was comparable in size to the rest mass of the electron.




No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...