Self-interaction and motion

Abraham

Harte

Dublin City University

January 21, 2026 02:00 PM
Abstract: An object's motion is affected not only by external influences, but also by its own (electromagnetic, gravitational, or other) fields. Self-interaction affects an object's inertia, drives binary inspirals in general relativity, and more. An important unifying principle for such effects is they can be viewed as equivalent to test-body motion in particular effective fields. I will explain the origin of this principle, the nature of the effective field, and recent work that allows it to be derived in a wide variety of contexts. In a point-particle limit, the effective-field interpretation can be viewed as a regularization procedure, implying that regularizations can be derived from first principles as the singular limits of ordinarily-nonsingular results that are useful also for finite bodies.

Zoom:

Zoom link: [LINK]

Meeting ID: 813 0444 2723

Passcode: 812303

Location:
Lecture Hall, ground level, Al. Lotników 32/46 / Zoom