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arXiv · 2504.11912

Nonlinearly self-interacting extended bodies move as test bodies in effective external fields

Abraham I. Harte·Francisco M. Blanco·Eanna E. Flanagan
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Abstract

In electromagnetism, linearized general relativity, and other contexts, previous work has shown that the laws of motion which govern compact, self-interacting bodies can be obtained by applying "Detweiler-Whiting prescriptions" to the laws of motion which govern test bodies. These prescriptions replace any field which appears in a test-body law of motion with a certain effective field which is a quasilocal functional of the physical variables -- a functional that can be interpreted as a regularization procedure in a point-particle limit. We generalize these results, presenting a formalism which allows Detweiler-Whiting prescriptions to be be directly derived for extended bodies, even in nonlinear field theories. If a generating functional with particular properties can be constructed, we find effective linear and angular momenta which evolve via Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations involving appropriate effective fields. These equations implicitly incorporate all self-force, self-torque, and extended-body effects. Although our main focus is on bodies coupled to nonlinear scalar fields, we also remark on the gravitational case.

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Abraham I. Harte, Francisco M. Blanco, Eanna E. Flanagan. 2025-04-16. Nonlinearly self-interacting extended bodies move as test bodies in effective external fields. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11912

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