Volume 2004, Issue 1 205916 pp. 179-204
Article
Open Access

Could the classical relativistic electron be a strange attractor?

L. P. Horwitz

L. P. Horwitz

School of Physics and Astronomy Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences Tel Aviv University Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel , tau.ac.il

Search for more papers by this author
N. Katz

N. Katz

Department of Physics Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan 52900, Israel , biu.ac.il

Search for more papers by this author
O. Oron

O. Oron

Department of Physics Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan 52900, Israel , biu.ac.il

Search for more papers by this author
First published: 18 May 2004
Citations: 1

Abstract

We review the formulation of the problem of the electromagnetic self-interaction of a relativistic charged particle in the framework of the manifestly covariant classical mechanics of Stueckelberg, Horwitz, and Piron. The gauge fields of this theory, in general, cause the mass of the particle to change. We show that the nonlinear Lorentz force equation for the self-interaction resulting from the expansion of Green′s function has chaotic solutions. We study the autonomous equation for the off-shell particle mass here, for which the effective charged particle mass achieves a macroscopic average value determined by what appears to be a strange attractor.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.