On the initial value formulation of classical electrodynamics

DOI10.1088/1751-8113/49/44/445202MaRDI QIDQ2834812zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Vera Hartenstein, D.-A. Deckert

Publication date 24 November 2016

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04685

zbMATH Keywords

classical electrodynamicsinitial value problemsingular light fronts

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Wave front sets in context of PDEs (35A18) Initial value problems for first-order hyperbolic systems (35L45) PDEs in connection with optics and electromagnetic theory (35Q60) Motion of charged particles (78A35)

Abstract: We describe a seemingly unnoticed feature of the text-book Maxwell-Lorentz system of classical electrodynamics which challenges its formulation in terms of an initial value problem. For point-charges, even after appropriate renormalization, we demonstrate that most of the generic initial data evolves to develop singularities in the electromagnetic fields along the light cones of the initial charge positions. We provide explicit formulas for the corresponding fields, demonstrate how this phenomenon renders the initial value problem ill-posed, and show how such bad initial data can be ruled out by extra conditions in addition to the Maxwell constraints. These extra conditions, however, require knowledge of the history of the solution and, as we discuss, effectively turn the Maxwell-Lorentz system into a system of delay equations much like the Fokker-Schwarzschild-Tetrode equations. For extended charges such singular light fronts persist in a smoothened form and, as we argue, yield physically doubtful solutions. Our results also apply to some extent to expectation values of field operators in quantum field theory.

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