Eliminating Infinite Self-Energies From Classical Electrodynamics

Abstract

The theory of point-particles in classical electrodynamics has a well-known problem of infinite self-energy, and the same is true of quantum electrodynamics. Instead of concluding that there is no such thing as a true point-particle, it is shown here how to remove the infinities by supposing that the electromagnetic field tensor has a symmetric part. This does not change the physics, as the equation of motion and the antisymmetric part of the retarded fields appearing in the equation of motion are unaffected. The symmetric part of the field tensor is not observable and therefore it need not be gauge-invariant, whereas the antisymmetric part is observable, gauge-invariant, and satisfies both the Maxwell Equations and the field equations governing the whole field tensor. This approach goes well beyond prior efforts at classical renormalization, and also entails a new derivation of the Lorentz-Abraham-Dirac (LAD) equation of motion. Implications related to General Relativity are described in the Appendix.