Soft Matter and Complex Systems Seminar

Usually at last pages of classical electrodynamics books it is shown, that due to radiation emitted by accelerating point charged particles, Lorentz force is not enough to provide energy and momentum conservation in the system. The need of additional force appears. The most popular form of this force (known as self-force or radiation reaction force) is the Lorentz-Abraham-Dirac (LAD) force proportional to time derivative of acceleration. However LAD force is known to provide non-causal particle trajectories (the particle starts to move before the arrival of the external electromagnetic field). To cure this behavior few causal theories were proposed. However they all lead to unphysical phenomena. The long search for correct theory suggests that such does not exist. In my talk I will present a proof of non-existence of causal classical electrodynamics of point scalar charged particles.