1303.7120 (Sen Zhang)

Pre-acceleration from Landau-Lifshitz Series    [PDF]

Sen Zhang

The Landau-Lifshitz equation is considered as an approximation of the Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac equation. It is derived from the Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac equation by treating radiation reaction terms as a perturbation. However, while the Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac equation has pathological solutions of pre-acceleration and runaway, the Landau-Lifshitz equation and its finite higher order extensions are free of these problems. So it seems mysterious that the property of solutions of these two equations is so different. In this paper we show that the problems of pre-acceleration and runaway appear when one consider a series of all-order perturbation which we call it the Landau-Lifshitz series. We show that the Landau-Lifshitz series diverges in general. Hence a resummation is necessary to obtain a well-defined solution from the Landau-Lifshitz series. This resummation leads the pre-accelerating and the runaway solutions. The analysis is focusing on the non-relativistic case, but we can extend the results obtained here to relativistic case at least in one dimension.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.7120