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View Full Version : Does a UNIFORMLY accelerating charge radiate? What about radiation reaction force?


user299792458
Jun21-07, 03:59 PM
It is often stated that ANY accelerating charge radiates, so this includes uniformly accelerating charges. But the radiation reaction force is proportional to the THIRD derivative of x, so it vanishes when acceleration is constant. What's the deal here?

Here's a graph which supposedly shows that the energy carried away by radiation (which is proportional to acceleration squared) is different than the work done by the radiation reaction force (which is proportional to velocity times the THIRD derivative of x). What's the deal with all of this?

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/general/radreact/radfig2.gif


And here's the full paper where this graph came from:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/general/radreact/


It seems the paper states that this is some kind of an unsolved problem or something. Is any of this true?

Meir Achuz
Jun21-07, 04:09 PM
"It seems the paper states that this is some kind of an unsolved problem or something. Is any of this true?"

I'm not going to read the paper, but it is still an unsolved problem.
The x triple dot result is only for some special cases, not including uniform acceleration.