Electron mass density approaches infinity?

Loren Booda · Oct 8, 2008

The electron is traditionally considered a point particle with finite mass. Does this indicate that the electron might have near infinite mass density?

granpa · Oct 8, 2008

no. its just a simplification. the uncertainty principle would cause it to have finite radius.

Meir Achuz · Oct 8, 2008

"Mass density" or "charge density" cannot be defined for a point particle.

ibc · Oct 8, 2008

I don't think anyone knows yet what is really going on there, but if nowadays' theories are correct, and all elementary parcticles are point parcticles, there is indeed no meaning to density in the parcticle scale, it's just our way to express the forces particles apply on each other on the macroscopic scale.

Vanadium 50 · Oct 9, 2008

granpa said:

no. its just a simplification. the uncertainty principle would cause it to have finite radius.

That doesn't sound right to me. What would that radius be?

humanino · Oct 9, 2008

clem said:

"Mass density" or "charge density" cannot be defined for a point particle.

There are published measurements of electron charge densities. That means the theory has been accepted, don't you think ? There are published measurements of Wigner distributions for photons in cavities. Even for massive extreme relativistic systems, such as light quarks confined in hadrons, the concepts of "mass/energy density", "angular momentum density", or "force densities" do make sense.

For instance :
"Tomographic theory for obtaining Wigner distribution for an electron in uniform magnetic field"
Phys. Lett. A301 (2002) 153

"Direct Measurement of the Wigner Function of a One-Photon Fock State in a Cavity"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 200402

"Generalized parton distributions and strong forces inside nucleons and nuclei"
Phys.Lett. B555 (2003) 57

ibc · Oct 9, 2008

Vanadium 50 said:

That doesn't sound right to me. What would that radius be?

I too don't know where he is going with this, but I believe he meant the "radios" of how far the particle can be

Meir Achuz · Oct 10, 2008

I think some people have confused the spread of a wave function with a property of a particle.

Electron mass density approaches infinity?

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Electron mass density approaches infinity?

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