Field Theory reformulated without self-energy parts.Divergence-free classical electrodynamics

Abstract

A manifestly gauge-invariant hamiltonian formulation of classical electrodynamics has been shown to be relativistic invariant by the construction of the adequate generators of the Poincare Lie algebra [Physica, 76, No. 3, 421-444 (1974)]. The original formulation in terms of reduced distribution functions for the particles and the fields is applied here to the case of two charges interacting through a classical electrodynamical field. On the other hand, we have been able in previous work to introduce irreversibility at the fundamental level of description [Ann. Phys., 311, 314-349 (2004)] by reformulating field theory without self-energy parts by integrating all processes associated with self-energy in a kinetic operator, while keeping the equivalence with the original description [Prog. Theor. Phys.,109, 881-909 (2003)]. In this paper, the two approaches are combined to provide a formalism that enables the use of methods of statistical physics to tackle the problem of the divergence of the self-mass. Our approach leads to expressions that are finite even for point-like charged particles: the limit of a infinite cutoff can be taken in an harmless way on self consistent equations. In order to check our theory, we recover the power dissipated by radiation in geometries where the usual mass divergence does not play a role