Radiation reaction

It is well-known that accelerating charges emit electromagnetic radiation, and that the emitted radiation carries aways energy. This gives rise to the phenomenon of radiation-reaction: if an accelerating charge loses energy by the emitted radiation, its dynamics must change, analogously to the recoil force acting on a gun when it is discharged. The effect of radiation-reaction is of minuscule magnitude and is extremely difficult to observe. Moreover, over 15 different theoretical models were suggested to account for this phenomenon, some by prominent physicist such as Dirac, Landau and Lifshitz. Our group is studying this phenomenon to better understand how radiation-reaction can be modeled theoretically using state-of-the-art computer simulations. We hope to confirm the phenomenon and its consequences experimentally in the lab.