High Energy Physics Seminar

Special date and time.

The self force problem is ubiquitous in astrophysics and cosmology. It is defined by the following situation. An object moves in contact with an external system (S), which may or may not break Poincare invariance.  The motion of the object deforms S which then back-reacts on the particle and changes its dynamics. When S is Poincare invariant (no medium)  this back reaction is called "Radiation Reaction Forces" while when it S violates this symmetry it is called  (incompletely) "Dynamical Friction".   In addition, a symmetry breaking medium leads to accretion of mass which can be a leading order effect.

In this talk I will introduce an effective field theory which generalizes the case of the vacuum to a medium. This theory turns out to have an interesting renormalization group flow in the context of the Schwinger Keldysh formalism and allows one to calculate in a systematic way  all of the above-mentioned effects for any choice of S.

The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.

Contact [email protected] for Zoom link.